1,000-HP Godzilla GT-R Battles 1,000-HP BMW M5, and It Doesn't End Well for the Wicked

For them, there’s the drag race, street race, won race, stock race, track race, Sunday race, lost race, and next race. They are willing to pour a treasure trove inside the engine bays and stuff their transmissions with unicorn blood just to gain that one-hundredth split of a second that makes the difference between the best and the rest.

Nissan engineers and their GT-R mutant have given everyone a run for their money, and pretty soon, the world learned the lesson: if you can’t beat them, try again. Since Nissan comes from the Land of the Rising Horsepower, one particular European country nailed its wrenching skills to the mast and picked up the gauntlet of go-fast supremacy.

That’s right, the Germans—who else is better suited to mess with the Zen apocalypse from the Far East? When it came about, the GT-R was about as subtle as a stubbed toe—it was a direct threat to the Porsche 911, so Germany had to retaliate (and it did). But there are other carmakers in 'Wrench Reich' who enjoy mocking the rest of Planet Speed with their unassumingly mundane. (By the way, ‘Reich’ has the benigne meaning of ‘Realm’ in German).

Take BMW as the perfect example. The Munich House of Motoring has a natural hatred towards anything Stuttgart (mostly because Mercedes lives there). However, the Bavarians don’t hold any grudges against Porsche; they’re in different classes and don’t get on each other’s toes. BMW doesn’t make sportscars (in the classic understanding of the notion), and Porsche stays out of the motorcycles and family cars games.

And yet, despite being about as German as they come, the merry lads from BMW do have a subtle sense of humor (or so they think). They even have an alphanumeric code name because they’re Germans and like to organize things. It’s ‘M5,’ and there really isn’t anything more annoying than it (or so all other carmakers think).

I mean, what’s so funny about a four-door, five-seater automobile (with a trunk big enough to allow a month-long, no-laundry-doing vacation) that can show its taillights to cocky mid-engined two-seaters with athletic genealogy? And that’s just the beginning before all combustion hell breaks loose and said Beemers go to the gym (read ‘tuner’).

The outcome depends vastly upon whatever the owner is willing to cough up, but this is 2024, and it’s getting more and more commonplace to see regular, everyday, normal mother-hauler casual automobiles pulling 1,000 horsepower out of the hat. The following BMW F90 co-starring in the video below is solid evidence for that statement. Although the team from the Officially Gassed YouTube channel states a 1,000 hp (1,014 PS) rating, the owner says 950 hp (963 PS).

Granted, it’s not exactly a chip off the old (stock) block because the 4.4-liter V8 is now a forged engine with sleeved cylinders, exhaust upgrades, methanol injection, an ethanol analyzer, prototype intakes, a billet coolant tank, replacement turbo inlets, and new maps for the Engine and Transmission Control Units (ECU and TCU).

We saw it a few weeks ago when it lined up against one helluva Porsche 911 from ES Motor UK (and lost). It’s back with a vengeance to wage war against a Nissan GT-R - a heavily modified Godzilla that puts down 1,020 hp (1,034 PS) and 789 lb-ft (1,070 Nm).  The Japanese-born supercar-killer has brought his own big-gun arsenal to the fight, right from the fully forged engine with sports camshafts, an upgraded valvetrain, custom turbos and manifolds, and an uprated fuel system (including 1,050-CC injectors). And it’s not over yet: heavy-duty gear sets for all forward gears, a 16-plate clutch pack, and a performance exhaust.

Side by side, the BMW is massively outnumbered: 490 bhp/ton versus 586 bhp/ton (I’ve revised the numbers according to the power output claimed by the Beemer’s owner). Both racers send power to all four corners (the F90 M5 uses a torque converter mated to its eight-speed automatic, while the GR-R makes do with a dual-clutch six-speed auto).

One note before I give the performance figures: the German sedan is still running on stock turbos (both of them), and this would be the most reasonable explanation for its top-end lower performance (compared to the Nissan). In the roll races to the quarter-mile mark, the BMW settles for second place in both runs. To give you a metric of how the two cars fared against one another: from 62 mph to 124 mph (100-200 kph), the GT-R beat the M5 by thirty-two hundredths of a second (4.53 v 4.85).

Expectedly, the drag race should end in very much the same way – with the rowdy Nissan waving the checkered flag for the late BMW, right? Dead wrong: the M5 takes off like a scalded cat, dropping the GT-R like the latter sits on cinder blocks. The launch from the German sedan is not for the faint of heart, although the car's heft (1,9 tons empty) doesn’t do much in its favor. Even with five people inside, it still kicks the Godzilla all the way to Loserland.

The Beemer crosses the 60-mph mark (97 kph) precisely 2.23 seconds after it gets its wheels rolling and crosses the 1,320-foot away line after 9.79 seconds, at 143.68 mph (231.18 kph). The Nissan lags behind and falls out of the nine-second pool. 10.15 at 143 mph flat (230.08 kph), with a zero=to-sixty time of 2.69 seconds.

Some viewers commented that it has to do with the different transmission architecture: the eight-speed box in the BMW has higher numerical ratios in the first four gears, leaving the line much faster than the Nissan. Others speculated that the GT-R driver didn’t spool the turbos properly and the infamously brutal launch control of the car wasn’t used correctly.

Human error or not, the stock turbos on the BMW did their job great (this could be another reason for the sedan's quick take-off; the bigger turbochargers on the Nissan don’t come into their own until later in the rpm range, as evident from the roll races). Whatever the reason, who’s to say that the Nissan could have done better or that it’s not all about the cars but about the drivers, too?