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Nissan GT-R brings up the question: Touring vs Racing?
By Product Expert | Posted in FAQs, Nissan GT-R, Performance & Safety on Wednesday, March 29th, 2017 at 7:49 pm
What’s the difference between a touring and racing car?
After recently announcing the 2017 Nissan GT-R Track Edition, and seeing many reviews saying it’s the perfect combination of touring and racing, suddenly people want to know what the difference is between a touring and a racing car. Which is a perfectly valid question. After all, the GT-R stands for Gran Turismo Racer, and Gran Turismo means Grand Tourer, so shouldn’t it stand to reason that a model is both?
What is a grand tourer?
A Gran Turismo, or tourer/touring car is a performance, luxury automobile. Consider it a mix of both luxury and speed, and since the term comes from Italy, you can imagine the many Italian sports cars that have existed to help make the term a staple. What do you picture? Sleek designs, premium materials, high speeds – but don’t all those things also describe sports cars?
Well, in the heights of muscle car mania, it may have been just enough to have the power, but you weren’t necessarily going to take your car to the track. A touring car is one that is designed for on-road use, whether it’s sporty or not. Now you may be thinking, but how is that different from any other car? Well, consider what you see when you watch NASCAR. Are those designed to drive down Main Street? Of course not, and that’s the main distinction.
More on performance: Front-Wheel Drive vs Rear-Wheel-Drive vs All-Wheel Drive
Every car you see on the road is technically a touring car, but a grand touring car would be a sports car like the Nissan GT-R, which might be used to race, but only against other performance models that were also originally made to drive down your local highway. Some may make the distinction that these cars are also built to withstand higher speeds over long distance drives, though not quite racing speeds.
So how can a car be a mix of touring and racing? Simply but, the body is reinforced for even higher speeds, as is the suspension system and tires. This brings the model closer to a race car, but you aren’t seeing your amenities stripped out just to shave off seconds on race day.
What’s your favorite GT car? Share your thoughts with a comment below, and be sure to check back at the Glendale Nissan Blog for more Nissan news and FAQs.
