4 September 2006
What's new?
A year ago Nissan clocked that Britons like high-performance sports utilities like the Range Rover Sport. So it decided to have a go, planning to have a car ready for this year's Goodwood Festival of Speed and the British motor show.
Taking a standard £30,000 Murano with a 231bhp, 3.5-litre quad-cam V6 and CVT transmission, Nissan fitted a turbocharger that punched power up to 338bhp at 6000rpm.
It dropped the body by an inch on suspension stiffened by Bilsteins all round, while a pair of mighty AP Racing front discs now peep through 22-inch alloys.
Nissan finished it off with darkened windows, a roof spoiler, bonnet intake, quad exhausts, bronzed brightwork and a custom interior.What's it like?
The results are encouraging. Everyone here likes the GTC. But on the road it's still a work in progress.
There are front-end bobs and weaves that no customer would accept, and when we drove it the car had some low-speed hesitation and smelled alarmingly of fuel.
But these small matters only go to show how accurately today's production cars are calibrated and prepared. The GTC pulled like a locomotive, handled neatly and its estimated performance (0-60: 7.0sec; top speed: 140mph) seemed realistic.Should I buy one?
Put through the proper bug elimination process, it would be a highly desirable machine - especially in the UK.Steve Cropley
A year ago Nissan clocked that Britons like high-performance sports utilities like the Range Rover Sport. So it decided to have a go, planning to have a car ready for this year's Goodwood Festival of Speed and the British motor show.
Taking a standard £30,000 Murano with a 231bhp, 3.5-litre quad-cam V6 and CVT transmission, Nissan fitted a turbocharger that punched power up to 338bhp at 6000rpm.
It dropped the body by an inch on suspension stiffened by Bilsteins all round, while a pair of mighty AP Racing front discs now peep through 22-inch alloys.
Nissan finished it off with darkened windows, a roof spoiler, bonnet intake, quad exhausts, bronzed brightwork and a custom interior.What's it like?
The results are encouraging. Everyone here likes the GTC. But on the road it's still a work in progress.
There are front-end bobs and weaves that no customer would accept, and when we drove it the car had some low-speed hesitation and smelled alarmingly of fuel.
But these small matters only go to show how accurately today's production cars are calibrated and prepared. The GTC pulled like a locomotive, handled neatly and its estimated performance (0-60: 7.0sec; top speed: 140mph) seemed realistic.Should I buy one?
Put through the proper bug elimination process, it would be a highly desirable machine - especially in the UK.Steve Cropley
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