Icons Don’t Need to Make Perfect Logical Sense: COTD

Gtr Cotd
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Just before lunch—well, just before I ate lunch, anyway—Matt Hardigree and Thomas Hundal went point-counterpoint on the R35 Nissan GT-R and its place in the 2023 performance-car marketplace —a marketplace where one can own three highly sporting, capable, and newly tooled machines for the price of one new-but-sorta-15-years-old Nissan GT-R. If you missed it, you can click on that hyperlink or on the image below to read the piece now. We’ll wait.

Gtr Matt

Aaaand we’re back. From this intellectual sparring sprang our medallion-winning Comment of the Day via Nsane In The MembraNe, insightful and well-reasoned as usual. More like Sane in the MembraNe, amirite? He took the time to opine at length on the GT-R, and his comments are presented unabridged, if not uninterrupted:

Okay the first issue I have here is that you’re not getting a GR Corolla at anywhere close to MSRP. Whenever I see articles extolling the virtues of that or the new Civic Type R I feel obligated to mention that. In my area both are selling for $10,000-$25,000 over MSRP. Will that change? I sure hope so, but it doesn’t seem like there’s any relief on the horizon. I am once again asking JDM fanboys to stop feeding into this insanity.

Gr Markup

No lies detected, dealers have gone nuts with markups on the GR. “Cool.”

But that brings me to one of my larger points re: the GTR. It doesn’t really matter that it’s not a great deal and a bit dated. It’s a Japanese sports car that has a place in automotive Valhalla because of how much of a cultural icon it is. People that want Japanese performance cars want Japanese performance cars and cost isn’t as much of a concern. I’d venture a guess that the majority of people buying GTRs aren’t cross shopping much of anything, and if they are they’re probably looking at the LC500. They’re not looking at 911s.

Rt Gtr

Iconic indeed. The GT-R is authentically so, and heaven knows “iconic” is a word that gets thrown around way too easily these days. But the GT-R earns it.

Which brings me to my next point-the GTR is unique. You’re going to run into 25 different 911s at every Cars and Coffee you go to. You’re going to see them all the time while commuting. Same with Corvettes. The ZL1 Camaro is a ridiculously great car and you all know that I’m a big fan of that platform…but to probably 90% of people it just looks like a tuner Camaro.

2018 Chevrolet Camaro Zl1 1le

Confession: I don’t notice Camaros at all, unless they sound interesting—ditto Chargers, Challengers, and Mustangs. I like ’em, and I’ve owned a Mustang GT, but they’re everywhere.

When I see a GTR I get excited. I feel something. I can’t say the same about most 911s, and I love Porsches. Honestly I can’t say the same about much of anything the GTR competes with. At the end of the day it stands out, and you’re not dropping six figures on a car to blend in.

Finally, the GTR living on is amazing for the secondhand market. You can find reasonably nice examples kicking around for 65-80k or so. At that price it’s a ridiculously good buy. I’ve lamented this a few times but the “one that got away” for me is a GTR. Back early in Covid when they couldn’t give cars away one got listed in the high 40s at a local Infiniti dealership. It was older (early 2010s I think) but had a clean Carfax and only 40k miles.

Carfax Gtr

The math checks out.

It would’ve been a stretch at the time, so I played it safe and bought a GTI. It turns out I’d get some sizable raises in the following months, the market would go bonkers, and now I’ll never get a deal like that again. It haunts me. I also could have made a coupe work at that point in my life. Now? No way Jose.

TL:DR-the GTR has always been cool and will always be cool. It doesn’t really matter that it’s old and not the strongest buy brand new. The types of folks who buy these really don’t care. It’s a dream car for a lot of people. Hell, one of my coworkers who’s pretty much a total normie once told me that a GTR was her favorite car. It’s an icon, and icons don’t need to make perfect logical sense.

What can I say? I agree mightily, as you may have guessed. When someone makes graphics to support an opinion, that’s a pretty good tipoff they agree. I’d still rather have a Nissan Z and a GR Corolla (magically at MSRP) and a Ford Maverick Tremor than a single GT-R, but if I was truly bucks-up and could afford all three plus a GT-R of any vintage? I would have one. How about you?

Have a great evening, tomorrow we crush Wednesday!

Images, composite graphic: 2024 Nissan GTR/Nissan; Godzilla/Bandai-S.H.Monsterarts
Additional images: Road & Track cover/Ebay seller, 2024 GT-R/Nissan; Camaro ZL-1/Chevrolet; CarFax sale/Carfax.com

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7 thoughts on “Icons Don’t Need to Make Perfect Logical Sense: COTD

  1. Hold on, if GR Corollas have markups worth an entire second base Corolla, then screw it! Why not just buy two Corollas and combine them? Seriously, if you want a fast AWD Corolla, just take the drivetrain of your donor Corolla and transplant it into the back of your preferred Corolla for a twin-engine AWD system, and maybe graft the fenders of the donor Corolla onto the outside of the twin-engine’d Corolla’s fenders to make a crude wide body kit, and boom. Equivalent performance for just over 40 grand assuming both cars you’re butchering are new. You can even have your fancy torque balancing gimmick if you use incorporate adjustable geometry into your dual throttle setup, so you can adjust how much throttle the front and rear engines give for a certain input.

    Sure it’s impractical, but so is spending 70 grand on a 300 hp hatchback.

  2. They’re still really damn rare too, I’ve seen them in the wild all of a couple of times, and one of those was on a highway that got stopped in traffic a bit and I got the chance to at least thumbs up the driver as he passed.

      1. I would as well, but I don’t have too many racing aspirations outside of an occasional track day. If I did I’d go GTR over LC as it’s significantly more capable. I think they’re both amazing cars, but from your perspective as a designer I totally get why you’d prefer the LC. It’s quite possibly the most beautiful car on the road, whereas the GTR is an unapologetic brute.

        I’m happy that they both exist and that the GTR will continue to live on. I hope the LC does as well. It’s a bit long in the tooth on paper but the styling is literally perfect and the powertrain will last for eternity so I hope they keep making them until regulations stop them. Plus the more there are on the road the better chance I have of picking up a secondhand one for a reasonable price.

        For god knows what reason they still actually depreciate a bit in the US market. We need to make sure we don’t say that too loudly because they really shouldn’t. I occasionally see early examples with moderate miles on them in the 60s (USD). It would be foolish of my to make that move now (the wife is pregnant with our first and we’re close to paying off our current cars) but in a few years? I’m crossing my fingers. It would be horrendous for baby duty but for kid duty? Totally acceptable.

    1. I would take a 2023 GT-R over both all day every day. they are sufficiently rare to fill that niches, they are gloriously fast, they have AWD, so if I decided to do it, I could daily it, though I would definitely not do that often. LC has that terrible Lexus Grill, It is hard to look past that and few even realize what it is, so if peacocking is your deal that would be a female peacock.

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