Saying the Nissan GT-R – in general – is fast would be a massive understatement, but just how fast one can make it go seems to beggar belief as this particular R35 can dip into the 2 minutes 14 seconds range at the Sepang International Circuit before being casually driven home.
Join the fastest cars in Malaysia at the CarTell Track Attack Volume II happening on May 27th 2023 at the Sepang International Circuit. Featuring 2 sessions for 8 hours of on-track action. Register now!
Welcome back to The Build Log, and today we take a look at the car that’s seemingly the merging of two extremes. A no-compromise street car with all the comforts of any R35, including electric seats and a BOSE speaker system, but one that routinely sits at the top of time attack charts despite this.
Title holder of the fastest street car to lap the track is one thing, but to discover that the car is an early batch 2007 model with zero lightweighting is a little mindblowing. Of course, this isn’t to say the car is a stock standard example.
Lots has been done to it, and according to its primary driver Firhat Mokhzani, where the car is now is the result of a journey that began in 2017 and a steady push to continually improve the car in search of that extra tenth, stemming from a curiosity to answer the question of “how fast can we make a true road car go?”
The black and orange-accented R35, which we remind you is a 16 year old car, has clocked 170,000km on the odometer, though it has been running with HKS internals and a HKS GT800 turbo kit since 2014, though it retains its original 3.8-litre displacement. New suspension components were added a year later, but these coilovers are street-spec HKS Hipermax. New brakes were in order, too, and they turned to Brembo GT spec hardware for that.
We didn’t manage to find out exact power figures, though it’s reasonably safe to assume that the uprated fuel system and COBB ECU, as well as the aforementioned uprated internals and beefier turbo system, means the car isn’t exactly putting down factory numbers.
That said, the car’s outputs are definitely quite conservative within the spectrum of the 4-figure horsepower modded R35s out there.
To everyone that has helped develop the car, including the fine people at Sunway-based ATS Automobiles who have become local foremost specialists in making crazy-quick GT-Rs, what they’ve been able to do is really a testament of how fantastic the R35 platform is.
Firhat chuckles as he’s remind of the relative ease of extracting even more performance and shaving lap times with the AWD Nissan, a car that would wade out onto the track bordering on 2 tonnes fully wet with driver.
Still, a lot of what they’ve been able to pull from the car can also be partially attributed to good fortune – having the right tune, making the right on-the-fly adjustments, in the right conditions, as well as the alignment of any number of different variables.
But has the ’07 R35 GT-R reached its limit? What’s the next benchmark for the boys at ATS? Is there yet more latent performance waiting to be unlocked?
You can catch Firhat and this Nissan GT-R in action at during CarTell Track Attack Volume II, happening this weekend on May 27th at the Sepang International Circuit as the centrepiece event that forms CarTell Speedfest co-organised with our friends at Velocity Motor Show.
Speedfest admission is absolutely free, letting you enjoy the many custom cars on display, live DJ, music, car audio competition, and the many exhibitors there offering amazing deals and promotions. It’ll be an amazing way to spend a Saturday, celebrating all things speed and automotive culture.
The track action will begin at 4pm and will continue over 2 sessions to midnight! If you’re keen to get in on the action yourself, limited track slots are might still available but are going fast! Register here to book your place NOW.