How can it be that a car weighing around 450lbs more than the 911 – one with less power, less torque and narrower rear tires – feels just as agile? (Autocar photo) » More Photos

That was from first to second – and as the cogs enmeshed, there was a slight judder through the car’s structure. You remember feeling that, but your brain has no recorded information on the subsequent five gearchanges actioned by the double-clutch transmission. Something to investigate after the tootling period is over.

At a tootle, in its base chassis setting, the GT-R is harsh. It crashes into anything deeper than a cereal bowl, fidgets most of the time and turns the humble lane marker into a rowdy member of the percussion section. This is very disappointing; you wait all this time to drive a GT-R and then it seems that spring rates taken from an early Mercedes G-Wagen scupper any chance it might have on back roads.

But then you notice the script ‘comfort’ winking on the dashboard and pull down on the paddle switch. The change is in no way dramatic, but in the context of what will happen over the coming hours, it is crucial. The ride settles slightly, and even if the boisterous Bridgestone RE 070s still do a muffled impersonation of Niagra Falls, the car is no longer deflected by the road’s topography.

Two minutes into the tootle, comfort setting engaged, you push the throttle towards the front bulkhead. The gearbox accomplishes a sixth-to-second shift whose speed and smoothness is beyond the capability of any mortal being, and the car begins to chew asphalt. This is probably the last time you will ever drive a GT-R at a tootle.

Where do you start with this machine? The 434lb ft of torque it produces from 3200rpm that barely feels turbocharged? The steering that has been so expertly developed that it makes it easy to thread down narrow roads a vehicle that the tape measure and bathroom scales consider too bulky. The preposterous levels of adhesion achieved at all times? On reflection, we’ll start with the bit that matters, with the component that binds these rare talents together into something meaningful: the transmission.

Two large, metal paddles appear from behind the R35’s steering wheel like elf’s ears. Pull the left one and it shifts down, pull the right one and the car selects a higher gear. That is all you need to know to drive the GT-R. And whereas the same could be said of a Tiptronic Porsche, the immediacy and smoothness of the R35’s gearchanges makes any other hydraulically actuated manual system (or doctored automatic) seem, at once, completely obsolete. It fashions forward momentum from situations that didn’t seem to offer such an opportunity.

With the able assistance of four driven wheels, this gearbox means that were you to plot a graph of available power and torque against the amount actually being deployed, the GT-R would register a flat line. You push, it goes. Accordingly, I now have grave fears for the 911.

How can it be that a car weighing around 450lbs more than the 911 – one with less power, less torque and narrower rear tires – feels just as agile? (Autocar photo) » More Photos

It has arrived. Perhaps to keep the Turbo’s dignity – or maybe in a feeble attempt to protect my own affection for the thing – I’m tempted not to drive it. This is the wrong course of action on two fronts; progress and natural selection mean that something must eventually emerge and challenge the fastest point-to-point car currently on sale. And once it’s traveling over some moorland road at a reasonable clip, the Porsche soon counters with a very different (and, some might argue, more relevant) take on high performance.

Wheel travel and ride comfort are its initial weaponry. The tires feel semi-inflated after the Nissan, and whereas the GT-R seems to want to beat the road into submission, the Porsche wants to accommodate the surface. It’s a small distinction but one that will prove critical later on. It’s an amazing thing, the Turbo – a car of confused physics that chews straights, stops with the force of a racing car and scoots through most bends at demon speeds.

Where the Nissan can feel slightly detached, the Porsche pulls you into the process of driving. It yaws and pitches, dives and shimmies. The wheel loads and unloads more obviously and the general feeling, having just driven the GT-R, is that the Turbo is simply too soft and underdamped. Push harder, however, and it gets better. If it were legal, you’d discover just how capable and enjoyable the Turbo can be.

But how can it be that a car weighing around 450lbs more than the 911 – one with less power, less torque and narrower rear tires – feels just as agile? Furthermore, how can it feel the quicker point-to-point device? Mostly it’s that transmission; all the time spent flailing about with the stick between the Porsche’s two front seats is employed in the business of going forwards in the GT-R.

But despite not feeling as delicate and not dealing with bumps anything like as well as the Porsche, the Nissan isn’t slowed by them. The car’s suspension has immense control over the bodyshell’s movement and this gives the driver great confidence – more confidence than the 911 gives its driver.

Don’t confuse this as a simple analog-versus-digital exchange, either. If the Porsche is the more characterful, the Nissan is still dripping with charisma – partly because anything that can demolish a road the way it does is going to enthrall any car lover, but also because it is so interactive.