We spent a day driving the 2020 Nissan GT-R to see if it has the qualities of a good daily driver

The GT-R is one of Nissan’s most powerful and icon cars.
Nissan advertises it as a supercar you can drive every day.
While it may be limited in seating capacity and fuel economy, it has great storage and is comfortable enough to be a daily driver.
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The following is a transcript of the video.

Matt DeBord: And you’ll see, when we floor it, you see it takes a little while to get up to speed there? You see that?

Today, I’m testing out one of the world’s most iconic supercars: the Nissan GT-R. I’m Matt DeBord. I get behind the wheel of the hottest cars and test them in real-world scenarios. Today, I’m gonna find out if the Nissan GT-R is a good daily driver. This is "Real Reviews" from Cars Insider.

The GT-R is one of Nissan’s fastest and most powerful machines, but the company likes to tout it as being an everyday supercar. So, what I’m gonna do is take it out, run some errands that I would typically run, and see if I can use this thing as a daily driver. But I’m gonna kick it up a notch, because what I have here is the Nissan GT-R Nismo, a faster and more powerful version of the car. Let’s see if we can tame this beast. I’m going to review it based on comfort, fuel economy, and storage. And then, a little bit later, I’m gonna pick up a couple of friends to see how the seating capacity is.

All right, so let’s talk specs for a second. The Nissan GT-R Nismo has a twin-turbocharged V6 that makes 600 horsepower, with 481 pound-feet of torque. There’s a six-speed, dual-clutch transmission that can run in automatic or manual mode, and it sends the power to an all-wheel-drive system. Nissan gives you a lot of control over the handling of the car. There are three switches here, and you can throw them all up into R mode to max everything out. But what I’m going to do is throw the middle one down into comfort. That softens up the suspension, ’cause I want to take it easy today while I’m running my errands on these suburban streets.

OK, here we are at our first stop, the grocery store. I’m gonna pick up some provisions for the family… in a supercar.

OK, now that we’re on our way over to the hardware store, I have a little time to talk about the Nissan GT-R Nismo as far as comfort and fuel economy are concerned. Let’s start with comfort. We have it in comfort mode, as far as the suspension is concerned, and it’s really not that comfortable. This is a stiff car. It’s a supercar; no one would expect it to be Buick-soft. As far as fuel economy is concerned, we have about a half a tank of gas in the car now. We haven’t burned up that much fuel since we started rolling, but we’re only getting about 11 miles per gallon, according to the car.

Here we are. Let’s go buy a chain saw.

I’ll say one thing about this car. It is stupendously fun to drive. And extremely easy and rather forgiving. Now, it has that reputation, but as supercars go, unless you flip it into full Godzilla mode, it’s pretty manageable. So, you know, in that respect, not bad as a daily-driver candidate, at least in the supercar genre. Now, what I don’t like about it is every time you start the car, you get to re- Car: Weather alert. I also don’t like that… Car: Weather alert. I also don’t like that every time you start, I don’t like the constant weather warnings from the infotainment system. That drives me nuts. I got them five, 10 minutes ago. Every you turn the car off and start the car again, it resets everything. So, even though you got the weather warnings from the infotainment system, you know, 10 minutes ago, you turn the car off, you go out and do something, you come back in, turn the car back on, it forgets. It forgets everything. It has no short-term memory. It has no long-term memory. It has no memory at all.

Now that I’ve spent a decent amount of time inside the GT-R, let’s talk about the interior. The GT-R’s infotainment system is a Nissan setup, and compared with industry leaders, it isn’t all that great. You have both a touch screen and a knob-and-buttons interface. Stuff like audio, navigation, and Bluetooth device pairing work, but the system is somewhat clunky. You can, of course, fall back on Apple CarPlay. Stack the GT-R’s infotainment up against other supercars, with their minimal interfaces and tiny screens, and Nissan’s offering seems lavish. The GT-R’s interior is fairly minimalistic, but, unlike other supercars, it isn’t cramped. There’s plenty of room to stretch out, at least for the driver and the front-seat passenger. The GT-R’s interior does, however, have something of a split personality. Some of materials are quite premium, and even beautiful. On the other hand, if you look too closely, you can see things like carpet on the doors and plastic on the dashboard. The GT-R’s interior is actually a really pleasant place to spend time, but if you’re looking for some of the luxury appointments that you’re gonna get from the legendary supercar brands, they’re just not here.

Aj Caldwell: What’s up?

Matt: Gentlemen, it’s been a long time.

Aj: All right.

Dan Gessner: Do you have room back there, Aj?

Aj: I’ve got enough room to survive.

Matt: You got legroom?

Aj: No legroom, but I’m here.

Matt: I see you are getting to know your knees a lot better, though, than you might have been.

Dan: This is actually how good a friend I am to Aj, so that he doesn’t have his knees in his chest. This is not a road-trip car.

Matt: You know, this is ironic, though, because it is a GT car, and the function of a GT car, right, is supposed to be to go on long road trips and drive really fast, that’s the whole point.

Dan: The name itself.

Matt: The name itself, right? Now, the function of supercars is not to go on long road trips.

Dan: That’s accurate, too.

Matt: So, this is why I say I think this is the GT car that kinda got drafted into being a supercar. Actually turns out being, It’s a pretty dang good supercar. I mean, there’s a lot of supercars that are, like, way less comfortable than this.

Aj: Do you think you could see this being an everyday supercar for yourself, if you could afford it?

Matt: Yes, the answer is yes. This would be a terrific everyday supercar. The big drawback, I think, here, is that it isn’t that comfortable. Like, it can’t be that comfortable for you back there, right?

Aj: Uh, I mean, Matt: Is it OK? I mean in terms of the ride.

Matt: I don’t mean in terms of the seating space.

Aj: The ride is bumpy. I mean, you talked about how the suspension was pretty stiff in comfort mode earlier. I feel like you get the brunt of the stiffness back here, for sure. But, like, the seats are comfortable.

Matt: All right, so, what are you guys thinking? You think it’s, you know? Seating capacity is pretty terrible, right?

Dan: Seating capacity, this is a two-person car, no matter what they call it.

Matt: It has to be, and it can’t be a tall, I mean, you could go all the way back and you’d still not have a lot of legroom.

Aj: I’ve been in some pretty small back seats and pretty, like, unmanageable back seats, and as far as, like, tiny back seats goes, this is not the worst. Like, it could be way worse than this.

Matt: OK, so that’s the end of my day with the Nissan GT-R Nismo. It is a staggeringly fun car to drive, but let’s answer the question. Is it a great everyday supercar? Well, let’s talk about comfort first. It wasn’t that comfortable to me, except when it was going down the highway in a straight line, but my passengers, who I took along for a joyride, thought it was OK even though they were tall guys, so we’ll give it a thumbs up there. Fuel economy is terrible. Eighteen miles per gallon is what they claim as a combined number, but we were getting something like 11. Now, how about seating capacity? Well, I think it’s OK for somebody in the front seat, but if you put a tall guy in the back seat or even a normal-sized adult, it’s gonna be very cozy. So, a bit of a problem there, but the trade-off is that you get a really big trunk. So, for storage, we got two bags of groceries, two cases of bubbly water, and a chain saw from Home Depot back there and still had room for some camera equipment. So, you just don’t get that in supercars, nowhere, nohow. I mean, that’s fantastic. So, is Nissan right? Is this a great everyday supercar? It is absolutely a great everyday supercar, probably the greatest everyday supercar. I don’t really see any clear competition out there. This one is a winner.