The Nissan GT-R has been voted winner of the ‘Dream Drives’ category in the 2013 Women’s Car of the Year (WCOTY) awards.
The Nissan GT-R may well appeal for its macho machine image, however, beyond its stocky stance and brutish performance it’s also a reasonably practical, luxurious, comfortable and safe automobile. These traits help to make the GT-R an easy car to drive and easy one to drive fast too, as we found out at Kyalami earlier this year.
Janico Dannhauser, Product Manager for GT-R at Nissan South Africa says, “The category win is a great one for the GT-R. It’s fantastic to see that a car with typically masculine connotations is also appealing to the ‘fairer sex’ and we can assure the thousands of voters that it is indeed a dream to drive.”
The Nissan GT-R has a rich motorsport heritage, having earned countless victories and championship titles since the original took to the race circuit in 1968.
The GT-R is powered by a 3.8-litre V6 force-fed by a set of turbochargers. With 397 kW (detuned slightly from 404 kW for S.A.’s warmer climate) and 628 nm, the GT-R is one of the fastest accelerating production vehicles on the planet. According to Nissan, and under the right conditions, the GT-R will launch from 0 – 100 km/h in 2.7 seconds, while the top speed is 315 km/h. Starting from R1.4 million, the GT-R is a total bargain when one considers the performance ability.
The WCOTY competition is run by Women on Wheels (WOW) magazine, which is published as a supplement to female interest titles including: O (the Oprah Magazine); Marie Claire; Cosmopolitan and House & Leisure. A record number of over 30 000 votes were cast across the various magazines for this year’s competition.
Charleen Clarke, editor of WOW, comments, “Each year more readers get involved in voting for their favourite cars, which just goes to show that women are researching and selecting the cars they want to drive. Women are definitely no longer in the back seat when it comes to making vehicle purchasing decisions.”
The overall 2013 WCOTY title went to the new Renault Clio – read our review here.
