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South Africa has become only the second international market to offer NISMO’s Club Sport package to GT-R customers.
Pretoria’s Hatfield-based Nissan high performance centre has been certified by NISMO to retail its high-end Club Sport goodies, thereby becoming only the second dealership outside Japan to gain NISMO accreditation for parts retail and installation.
The only other dealership known to be fully NISMO accredited is Middlehurst Motorsport in the United Kingdom.
A true SpecV alternative?
Although pricing is as yet unavailable for the Club Sport package (it retails for R300 000 in Britain), its NISMO parts do not add much to the series R35's suite of dynamically able features.
A set of SpecV lookalike alloys (courtesy of Rays) save 1kg per wheel corner, whilst some fancy new titanium exhaust plumbing trims another 5kg and increases the drama of GT-R’s acoustic signature.
Inside the Club Sport swops-out the stock GT-R seats for a pair of composite moulded items which look great and save another 12kg in weight. These new seats are not powered though - so you'll have to wrist action them to find the perfect driving position.
Totalled, the Club Sport package reduces the GT-R’s mass by around 21kg – hardly a remarkable number worthy of the Club Sport billing.
What is the point of this NISMO Club Sport package then? Well, it really is about as dynamically finessed a GT-R as you are going to be able to buy the reasonably priced side of a SpecV.
With Bilstein’s most sophisticated Damptronic real-time adjustable dampers oscillating inside rather stiff 18.5kg/mm coils up front and 9.6kg/mm springs at the rear, the Club Sport package should elevate the GT-R’s cartoonish levels of grip and high-speed tracking ability to a standard only safely accessible on a closed circuit.
Considering the Club Sport's coil springs are about 20% more rebound resistant than the standard GT-R’s, don’t expect plush low-speed ride quality.
The trade-off is that those Damptronic dampers have both active bump and rebound control, instead of the standard R35's Bilstein's which only have bump control. An upside of this more sophisticated Damptronic set-up is that it allows greater handling finesse (especially with those super-stiff springs) over uneven surfaces, where the normal R35 can become upset by surface imperfections.
Club Sport's longer travel rear dampers allow the GT-R to keep its rear tyres in contact with the road surface more securely during intense braking too.
This should guarantee the most stable posture imaginable when setting the car up for a tight corner after a long straight.
Validating the NISMO bits locally, Global GT-R’s boss (and former Nissan engineer) Wilhelm Baard humbled all comers at the recent Knysna Hill Climb.
In a Club Sport equipped GT-R, Baard managed to set the outright fastest wet and dry times of the event, despite the presence of quite a few pure competition cars; clearly illustrating the Club Sport package’s dynamic worth.
Although the Club Sport package is criminally expensive (and should not be any cheaper locally), Baard’s performance at the Knysna Hill Climb illustrated that a few small changes can have rather substantial performance gains.
Pretoria’s Hatfield-based Nissan high performance centre has been certified by NISMO to retail its high-end Club Sport goodies, thereby becoming only the second dealership outside Japan to gain NISMO accreditation for parts retail and installation.
The only other dealership known to be fully NISMO accredited is Middlehurst Motorsport in the United Kingdom.
A true SpecV alternative?
Although pricing is as yet unavailable for the Club Sport package (it retails for R300 000 in Britain), its NISMO parts do not add much to the series R35's suite of dynamically able features.
A set of SpecV lookalike alloys (courtesy of Rays) save 1kg per wheel corner, whilst some fancy new titanium exhaust plumbing trims another 5kg and increases the drama of GT-R’s acoustic signature.
Inside the Club Sport swops-out the stock GT-R seats for a pair of composite moulded items which look great and save another 12kg in weight. These new seats are not powered though - so you'll have to wrist action them to find the perfect driving position.
Totalled, the Club Sport package reduces the GT-R’s mass by around 21kg – hardly a remarkable number worthy of the Club Sport billing.
What is the point of this NISMO Club Sport package then? Well, it really is about as dynamically finessed a GT-R as you are going to be able to buy the reasonably priced side of a SpecV.
With Bilstein’s most sophisticated Damptronic real-time adjustable dampers oscillating inside rather stiff 18.5kg/mm coils up front and 9.6kg/mm springs at the rear, the Club Sport package should elevate the GT-R’s cartoonish levels of grip and high-speed tracking ability to a standard only safely accessible on a closed circuit.
Considering the Club Sport's coil springs are about 20% more rebound resistant than the standard GT-R’s, don’t expect plush low-speed ride quality.
The trade-off is that those Damptronic dampers have both active bump and rebound control, instead of the standard R35's Bilstein's which only have bump control. An upside of this more sophisticated Damptronic set-up is that it allows greater handling finesse (especially with those super-stiff springs) over uneven surfaces, where the normal R35 can become upset by surface imperfections.
IS THAT ALL?: Yes, those are indeed SpecV-type wheels and the illustrated damper and spring upgrade for each wheel corner is the, well, cornerstone of NISMO’s Club Sport package.
This should guarantee the most stable posture imaginable when setting the car up for a tight corner after a long straight.
Validating the NISMO bits locally, Global GT-R’s boss (and former Nissan engineer) Wilhelm Baard humbled all comers at the recent Knysna Hill Climb.
In a Club Sport equipped GT-R, Baard managed to set the outright fastest wet and dry times of the event, despite the presence of quite a few pure competition cars; clearly illustrating the Club Sport package’s dynamic worth.
Although the Club Sport package is criminally expensive (and should not be any cheaper locally), Baard’s performance at the Knysna Hill Climb illustrated that a few small changes can have rather substantial performance gains.
