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While Ghosn called the shots, Kazutoshi Mizuno, chief vehicle engineer and chief product specialist, choreographed the GT-R's journey from a Japanese concept to Germany's famed Nürburgring racetrack, where it clocked 0 to 60 m.p.h. (100 km/h) in 3.2 sec., a wink faster than Porsche's GT3. "Mizuno was responsible for cherry-picking those he wanted to work with," says Hiroshi Hasegawa, chief designer of the GT-R. "Information cascaded from him." A veteran racing-system developer and director, Mizuno asked Ghosn to allow for a race-car development method. He started in December 2003, using early...
...very intense but more so because everyone was interested in the car. It gets very emotional." Hasegawa points to conflict between the engineering and design teams but says, "Compared to a normal project, we were more strongly conscious of being members of a team," and adds that building the GT-R was their shared goal. Mizuno reduced that task to its four core elements: engine, transmission, suspension and body design. Nissan hopes to use the same structure for the design of its Z and Cube models...
...cross-company, cross-national teamwork that created the car is inspiring those who are selling it. Nissan's marketing team held global meetings at which, for example, a proposal from Europe to work with only a select number of GT-R dealers was picked up for Japan and, possibly, the U.S. (The GT-R was unveiled in Japan last October, and will launch in the U.S. in June and in Europe by March...
Conspicuously absent from the team is advertising. Nissan's nontraditional marketing plan for the GT-R includes viral video, manga, two documentaries and a tie-in with Sony Computer Entertainment for an appearance in PlayStation's new Gran Turismo 5. The strategy is another signal of change: publicity-generated marketing is common practice for brands like Aston Martin and Lamborghini...
While the GT-R is further proof of Nissan's global dna--it is, after all, a Japanese company run by a Frenchman--Nissan has never deviated from keeping the GT-R's image rooted in Japan. (Ghosn's steering committee even toyed with the idea of linking the GT-R with Godzilla.) Mizuno often says that the car was born in Japan and raised in Germany. The GT-R, he says, is an expression of the Japanese senpai-kohai system, in which the more experienced teach their juniors. The GT-R team simply took that Japanese concept and exported...