Looking at buying a Nissan GTR

GSS35

motorguy wrote: »

Everyone is different so fair enough, but i really dont get this?

Live at home with parents whilst heading towards middle age, by your own admission lead a "boring" life, have driven non performance cars this past 9 years then WHAM whack down £50,000 or whatever and buy a supercar (in all but name) with the running costs of a small South American country. :eek:

By your own admission you wont be able to open it up on the open road - and you dont seem to want to drive it fast anyway.

Just all seems very odd.

Not quite correct.

Car ownership has been boring, family cars.

I've always driven responsibly (when I first got my license, I was not allowed to drive unsupervised to prevent bad habits, and my spacial awareness of gaps was poor!!)

I won't drive it fast on public roads due to road conditions and additional hazards compared to an airstrip. Also never know, there may be unmarked police cars. Will take the car to air strip-type high speed events to unleash the potential. On public roads, the secondary benefit I will get is I will still sense the acceleration (commonly the tractability i.e. 30-70 which is more real world than 0-60) and the aura of being in such a legendary car.


My mate did 120 in a family car up the M40 and had to go court, it's not worth the risk speeding at all. But I do intend to make full use of this car's potential.


Ideally you would expect to do something like Evo > M3 > R34 GT-R > R35 GT-R and have that experience, which can help on insurance quotes and looking "good", but then I wouldn't be able to afford this car! Quite a few youngsters are now able to get decent quotes on this type of car at young ages (I was/am shocked!! Maybe they're outside London, not sure).

Dumping this sort of money into a car (and a car of this nature) is an "eggs in one basket" type thing, but I've thought about mortgage here and my future (i.e. current relationship, where that could go, etc... ).

motorguy

GSS35 wrote: »

Not quite correct.

Car ownership has been boring, family cars.

I've always driven responsibly (when I first got my license, I was not allowed to drive unsupervised to prevent bad habits, and my spacial awareness of gaps was poor!!)

I won't drive it fast on public roads due to road conditions and additional hazards compared to an airstrip. Also never know, there may be unmarked police cars. Will take the car to air strip-type high speed events to unleash the potential. On public roads, the secondary benefit I will get is I will still sense the acceleration (commonly the tractability i.e. 30-70 which is more real world than 0-60) and the aura of being in such a legendary car.


My mate did 120 in a family car up the M40 and had to go court, it's not worth the risk speeding at all. But I do intend to make full use of this car's potential.


Ideally you would expect to do something like Evo > M3 > R34 GT-R > R35 GT-R and have that experience, which can help on insurance quotes and looking "good", but then I wouldn't be able to afford this car! Quite a few youngsters are now able to get decent quotes on this type of car at young ages (I was/am shocked!! Maybe they're outside London, not sure).

Dumping this sort of money into a car (and a car of this nature) is an "eggs in one basket" type thing, but I've thought about mortgage here and my future (i.e. current relationship, where that could go, etc... ).

Well, credit where credits due, you seem determined and if you're buying with cash, if you circumstances change and you end up taking a bath on it then thats life. I've made some daft purchases in my time and ended up blowing a fortune in depreciation, so i'm certainly not sitting in judgement.

Your money, your choices. Fantastic car. Hope it all works out. Dont forget to post pics when you get it!! - i'm expecting to see it in Readers Cars over on PH (saw you post there).

bigjl

Do it now before you have kids and won't have the chance for the next 20/25 yrs.

gzoom

As long as you work out the numbers and happy with how your spending your money all is good. Just make sure you don't under-estimate the running costs of a GTR.

I've a Honda Integra Type R, Nissan 350Z, BMW 335i, and now drive a Nissan Leaf

I've perviously considered a GTR, but on our house hold income, I couldn't make the numbers work, the running cost vs fun/petrolhead appeal just didn't add up on a GTR, not unless your on about 100K/year.

If your haven't actually had much experience in performance cars, I seriously re-commend looking at something like a Honda Integra. In terms of pure driving 'fun', big BHP/0-60 times doesn't actually mean much, especially on public roads.


http://www.evo.co.uk/carreviews/cargrouptests/205577/honda_integra.html



I've obsessed with chasing BHP figures in my old 335i, but you might be amazed to hear I actually have more 'fun' driving around in my 109bhp Nissan Leaf?? Why...because I can thrush the Leaf to with-in one inch of its life and still not break the speed limit, next to nothing running costs, means I drive it much more than I did my 335i. The 335i was great, but at £1/mile, licence losing speedings after about 4 seconds on throttle meant most of the time I just drove it around staring at the fuel counter going down, and constantly worried about cameras/repair costs...

The Integra R is getting old these days, but there is currently a huge choice of 'Hot-hatches' which I think will be just as fun as a GTR.

If I was to chose a 'fun' car for sensible money, a Renaultsport M!gane 275 Trophy-R would be hard to ignore!!

http://www.evo.co.uk/videos/14716/evo-car-of-the-year-2014-the-video

But if your heart is set on a GTR, go for it, and do it before you have kids/get married, but just be realistic about how much £££ your be spending/wasting

bowlhead99

At risk of feeding the troll here, but hey what are lazy sunday afternoons for...

You seem to have a funny idea about how insurance works.

You said you had never owned a car, so everyone said insurance on a quasi-supercar would be expensive for you, because zero experience and zero NCB can create eye-watering insurance costs, particularly when living in London.

But actually that should not be a massive issue because you tell us you have 9 years NCB, and you're not in your teens or early 20s where your premium would have massive loading from being young. So, based on the facts, insurance will be expensive but not outrageous. More expensive than a sensible car, but only because of the insurance group of the car, and not because of your personal un-insurability.

But you've said in at least three separate posts now some strange misconceptions about the insurance industry:

GSS35 wrote: »

Insurance is £700 - £800 a year, but I have not yet tried specialist insurers. The implication of this being my first performance car is that I cannot really get a modified example, and need to get standard, show I can handle the car, a year later, I can modify it as I wish

GSS35 wrote: »

Ok I should have been clear, this is not my first car. I've been driving for 9 years, but no performance cars owned. I've been a policy holder so have 8 full ncb. The implication is that I can easily get insured on a standard car but not a heavily modified one (at least have a standard one for a year to prove to insurers I'm responsible, then mod away if I wish to).

GSS35 wrote: »

Ideally you would expect to do something like Evo > M3 > R34 GT-R > R35 GT-R and have that experience, which can help on insurance quotes and looking "good", but then I wouldn't be able to afford this car!

The way you're talking is like a teenager who has not actually lived in the real world and is guessing how it works to make themselves sound authoritative and hopefully less like a troll.

But when you go to ask an insurer for a quote, you don't take along your motoring CV, and say "ah yes, I've been insured on a succession of hot hatches and q-cars and supercars without crashing them, as proven by my insurance history, so now can I get a good quote on a GTR please". You don't say "I did a few thousand miles this last year on my standard GTR and now I've 'proved myself' at being able to handle the acceleration and parking it in safe parts of town, and didn't have it stolen or dented, please can I put some mods on it now"?

You ask the insurer for a quote and tell them that you have an entitlement to 9 years' no claims bonus, based on your status with your last insurer, which you prove by letter if necessary. 9 years is about the maximum level that insurers take into account with any appreciable effect on net premium. When you tell them the NCB/NCD level, they thank you for the number and run the quote. The insurance person on the other end of the phone doesn't say "ooh 9 years, that's nice dearie, were they all in cars with at least 200bhp and a 0-60 time under 7 seconds? Or did you earn that discount from a succession of unattractive family saloons?".

They just run the numbers. For my last car I moved up to one which was quite a lot faster and more valuable than my previous one. I wasn't asked by the quote comparison site or my eventual insurer whether my NCD came from hatches, convertibles, people carriers or supercars. If I change the exhaust in a few months they are not going to say "sorry, you've only had six months practice with that car, you need twelve months before we will allow you to get a noisier exhaust for a nominal premium increase".

Some OEM parts are a rip off, if a front bumper cost 10k I'd get an aftermarket one for 1-2k, which would even be carbon fibre. Even a CF roof and boot could be sourced for 2-3k.

It is a car that costs 78k list price new plus £5,£10,£20k of extras. So call it an £80-£100k car. You're looking to finance a second hand version worth maybe £60k. If the official bodywork and parts cost thousands and you replace them with other parts costing hundreds, it will no longer be a £60k car. And given you are not planning on even financing all the car (48 months at £640pm plus £16k initial deposit is not close to £60k), your residual value is important, and you'll destroy it with cheapo replacement bits.

Tires at best can be be had for £700 (and the right type of tires and Nitrogen filled),

When you're driving a 500bhp car there is more to 'the right type of tyres' than the size. For a quality tyre, Michelin Pilot Super Sports are great. They are going to set you back about £1k for the four corners (20 inch, staggered sizes back and front). You can get some cheaper tyres but it may be a false economy trying to cut 30% off. You can get some sticky trackday-focussed tyres but you'll lose durability, and therefore need to buy them more often.

brakes are 2k every 2 years (with pads about £600, but I found much cheaper pads).

Yes, definitely get the much cheaper pads because there is no better way of maintaining or improving the value and performance of your £60k 500bhp supercar than by replacing the OEM items with much cheaper pads.

Most of the engine/gearbox issues are protected under an aftermarket warranty.

(i.e. weak links in the gearbox I can change with uprated aftermarket parts and keep an aftermarket warranty and the cost of those parts is like £100-200). Nissan did really compromise on this car unfortunately.

So the £10k gearbox, on which Nissan really compromised and which may go pop, and is not designed to be user maintainable... might break, but if it does, you hope your aftermarket warranty will cover it, and if not no worries because you can improve it by swapping out £100 of parts because you read on a specialist forum about some mechanic who did that and uprated the weak link parts and made it better.

Forgive us while we suspend our collective disbeliefs.

LOL @ if you have to finance it, you can't afford it. Like we don't finance our homes. Yes a home is an appreciating asset, but it still gets financed + interest. Businesses finance assets, airlines finance planes, but in the case of one person financing one car, that's not so bad.

Correct - a home is an appreciating asset, hence acquiring it on finance while it appreciates is a sound economic move.

Business assets depreciate, but in doing so they generate flows of net income delivering positive net present value, hence the directors may find that loans or finance leases are a more efficient route to ongoing ownership of those assets than the cost of capital demanded by their shareholders. For one thing, the cost of finance is a tax-deductible expense which - like a BTL mortgage - lowers the tax that would otherwise be suffered on the income.

By contrast, buying a depreciating 'fun' asset like a fast car on finance is something you do for convenience to get you in your fast car sooner than saving up for it, and just suck up the extra expense, but you can't convince us that it is a particularly effective use of finance. Unless the cold hard cash that you would have otherwise have spent on the car after saving up for it, is going to be deployed in other investments offering a high rate of return than the finance cost on the car.

Credit where it's due, a lot of people in their 20s wouldn't plan so much that they seek advice on here prior to such a big purchase. I'm leaving no stone unturned in researching this car and I've planned this for years.

You don't seem to be 'seeking advice', so much as 'telling us what you are going to do despite the advice you get'. Therefore, you are probably leaving stones unturned.

Herzlos

GSS35 wrote: »

I won't drive it fast on public roads due to road conditions and additional hazards compared to an airstrip. Also never know, there may be unmarked police cars. Will take the car to air strip-type high speed events to unleash the potential. On public roads, the secondary benefit I will get is I will still sense the acceleration (commonly the tractability i.e. 30-70 which is more real world than 0-60) and the aura of being in such a legendary car.

If you're looking at spending this money on a car you're only going to drive fast on a track, have a look at what track-only cars you can get for the same money, that'll blow it away. You'll have way more fun in an Atom/Caterham.

Double_V

Get an Audi RS5 or RS7 or just A5.
Good luck.

Pincher

Try sitting in the passenger seat.


I had an IT colleague, on contractor rates, so he could afford a GTR.


I got to ride, not to drive, and it took me a while to work out why it was so cramped in the passenger seat: IT IS SMALLER than the driver's side.


They assume the man is butch and chunky, and the girl friend is a dinky accessory. Not sure how it fits in with a Heavy Metal album cover fantasy, because the girls are big blondes.