Tag Archives: Nissan

Green Cars of the 2012 Le Mans

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The “green” race cars participating in this year’s Le Mans got together for a good old fashioned photo-op. Moving from left to right we start with the Nissan Deltawing. It’s half the weight and aerodynamic drag of a normal race car so it only needs half the power and fuel. The blue and white car is the Toyota TS030 which ended up not competing in Le Mans due to a heavy crash in testing. It’s powered by a gasoline V8 on the rear axle and electric motors on the front. The silver and red car behind the Toyota is the Audi E-tron Quattro. It’s rear axle is powered by a diesel V8 with electric motors powering the front axle. The interesting aspect of the Audi is that it uses the electromagnetic flywheel energy storage system that’s been campaigned on the Porsche 911 GT3 RS Hybrid. The black and orange car on the end is the hydrogen powered GreenGT H2.


Source: TechVehi

Nissan Leaf on Racing Slicks

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Car and Driver teamed up with Tire Rack to see if they could get a Nissan Leaf to pull a full 1.00 G on the skid pad. They work their way up from the stock Bridgestone Ecopia tires to full racing slicks. It seems kind of overkill, but a lot of people run racing slicks on stock cars for autocrossing. Normally I would say coilovers and anti-sway bars would be a key component to this process, but nobody makes them for the Leaf. The final result may surprise you. The cool part is they say that electric sports cars might be pretty fun.


Source: Car and Driver on a YouTube

Motor Trend Drag Race: GT-R vs. Z06 vs. GT500

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I came across another one of Motor Trend’s random gratuitous drag races. This is the 2012 Nissan GT-R vs. the 2011 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 vs. the 2011 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500. One of the interesting stats to note is that the Corvette is the only car without forced induction, but weighs in under 3300 pounds while the other two are north of 3800. Enjoy:

Source: Motor Trend on YouTube

2013 Nissan GT-R vs. 2012 Porsche 911 Turbo S: Motor Trend Head 2 Head

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Motor Trend pits their new 2013 Nissan GT-R Black Edition long term test car up against the 2012 Porsche 911 Turbo S. This may not seem like a natural comparison, but both of these cars have twin turbocharged 3.8 liter V6’s powering all wheel drive systems. Nissan has been incrementally upgrading the GT-R every year since its release. Starting in 2012, they really killed the car’s natural tendency to understeer and a lot of people declared that they had given the car a soul. The 911 Turbo S costs $71,000 more than the GT-R. Even though the naturally aspirated 911 moved to the new 991 chassis this year, the turbo is still on last year’s 997 chassis. Johnny Lieberman flogs both cars on Mulholland drive, then drag races them and hits the standard performance tests.


Source: Motor Trend on YouTube

The Nissan DeltaWing

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Road & Track got an exclusive look at the new Nissan DeltaWing race car doing some full power testing. It’s currently being powered by a turbocharged and direct injected 1.6 liter inline 4 cylinder engine. Nissan makes the engine and it’s related to the optional turbocharged engine for the Juke. The goal behind the car was to make be lighter and more aerodynamically efficient than a traditional car in order to reduce fuel consumption. That’s why the nose and front tires are so narrow. The DeltaWing is able to turn because its center of gravity is almost on the back axle. That gives the front wheels a lot more leverage on the weight of the car. The design was in the running to become the new chassis for Indy but was passed over for a more traditional design. Now Nissan is picking up the project to race in the 24 hours of Le Mans.


Let me give you full disclosure here. I’m all for new technology and efficiency in motorsports more than most, but I absolutely hate this car. It’s my opinion that the DeltaWing is too far in the realm of idealistic engineering theory and not a practical design. It makes some sense if you analyze the forces on the tires and the center of gravity while the car is static, but I think the car will suffer in wheel to wheel racing when the drivers are trying to pass using aggressive line changing with the weight of the car shifted forward from heavy braking. A lot of passing maneuvers depend on how the car behaves in situations like that and I don’t see the DeltaWing being particularly good for them. I sincerely hope I’m wrong.

Source: Road & Track YouTube Channel