Mike, TheMekanic take on Auto News, Gadgets, Tips and more ….

Recently someone I know bought himself a Porsche. If you have been following my site for sometime, you’ll notice that I’ve been focusing more on cars from the Land of the Rising Sun. While I’m fond of cars from Europe and less so of the US, the reason is because European Cars cost a ton here where I live and US cars practically do not exist. That’s unless you count some Chevrolets, that are actually Korean. Or are they Japanese? That’s a sad state of affairs in the country. We shall not go into politics on this blog, I hope not anyway.

Okay, maybe it is because I’m getting grey. I used to admire Porsche a lot. That is when I compare it to a Ferrari. At the risk of of getting flamed from both sides, comparing a P to a F, that’s nuts but anyhow, “you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do” is my motto (some of the time). Like I said, I used to admire Porsche because they are “more” practical compared to Ferrari, where I live anyway. It not like we have autobahns or that. The highway speed limit is only 110 km/h. That also before global warming made this part of the planet so warm I start sweating immediately after a shower!

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Nissan announced that the GT-R had set a new lap record on the Nurburgring with a lap time of 7 minutes and 29 seconds back on April 17, 2008. Since then, there has been rather “interesting tit for tat” between the German sports car builder Porsche and the Japanese automaker Nissan seeing who is faster than whom.

Porsche off course didn’t take this too well, what with Nurburgring being in its backyard, and its pride at stake cranked up the power in the 911 Turbo, made it go an a diet with a 55 lbs weight loss. Even though 10 seconds is respectable, it is still behind the GT-R’s time.

Note: While all the times claims by Nissan and counter claims by Porsche is not independantly verified, there has been a lot of detractors and supporters. Until then, I’d take whatever these 2 claimed times with a pince of salt.