McLaren 540C vs Honda NSX vs Nissan GTR
Watch Three Super-Fast Cars — the McLaren 540C, Honda NSX, and Nissan GT-R — Battle It Out on the Drag Strip
Nissan’s GT-R earned its nickname “Godzilla” in 1989 by embarrassing the competition and earning a clean sweep of 29 Japanese Touring Car races. The car’s face-melting acceleration played no small role, and even today the GT-R is seen as a giant killer. But with the current R35 going on its 10th model year, can it still hang?
Finding out requires that most-satisfying genre of hoonery: the drag race. For this one, Auto Express brought along two competitors that are both thoroughly modern, but could not be more different.
Let’s Get Ready to Rumble
McLaren’s factory-fresh 540C comes at a time when the British supercar builders can’t make cars quickly enough. As McLaren’s answer to the Porsche 911, the 540C is the cheapest Mac on the market, but still promises hair-raising performance. That’s mostly thanks to its light weight and potent, boosted V8.
Arriving at just about the same $160k price point is the prodigal Honda NSX. It’s a car Honda made us wait a decade for. In order to be fleet of foot, it relies on electric motors and all-wheel drive, rather than simplicity and lightness. That makes it more like the GT-R than the McLaren. But the Honda uses technology a decade newer than Godzilla — call it Mechagodzilla, perhaps? Voltron, anyone?
Putting the Power Down
With a wet airstrip for a race venue, it’s fair to say the GT-R and Honda have the advantage with their all-wheel drive. All three cars have launch control, and off the line, the added grip delivers for the Japanese cousins, with the GT-R getting the holeshot on the two newer cars.
Godzilla’s dominance is short lived, however, as the bantamweight Brit builds up a head of steam and makes alphabet soup of its pals. At the line, it’s 540C, NSX, GT-R. But what about the GT-R’s big lead on the Honda for most of the video? How did the Honda make up so much ground?
Multiple Takes
Close observation confirms what many unhappy commenters suspect — this video is the product of several races. But why?
In truth, this is a far more accurate way to determine that the 540C is the quicker-accelerating car. Even the best driver isn’t going to nail a perfect launch every time, and with three cars like these, we’re confident saying most reputable sources would have done the same.
The times you see displayed are likely the best recorded for each car, more proof that the outcome of the video is accurate, albeit edited. So don’t feel burned, unless you’re a GT-R owner. For what it’s worth, merging should still be a piece of cake.