There are many things that make the Nissan GT-R a cool car, including the fact that it offers supercar-->ke177like performance for only a little over $100,000. What I like most about the GT-R, though, is that it also spawned a successful race car.->ke148 To me, that's very important, as I simply hate supercars that can't hold their own on a race track (I'm looking at you Bugatti Veyron). The GT-R started wearing a racing suit only months after the road-going car went in production, hitting the track for the 2008 Super GT series in Japan. Starting 2009, the GT-R and GT-R Nismo raced in the FIA GT Championship.

As the street-legal GT-R received drivetrain updates, so did the race cars. Ultimately, Nissan decided to build a GT3-spec GT-R and send it to America for the 2015 Pirelli World Challenge. Tuned by Canadian race shop AIM Motorsport, the GT-R GT3 made its debut at the Circuit of the Americas (COTA) in early March with a sixth place finish -- an excellent result given competition comes from Ferrari,->ke252 Porsche,->ke1 McLaren,->ke284 and Audi.->ke14 With the second race of the season in St. Petersburg, Florida just around the corner, Nissan->ke62 released a seven-minute video that documents its race in Austin, Texas, which team principal Ian Willis referred to as "day one" for the new GT3. Click the play button for some awesome track footage from COTA.

2015 Nissan GT-R Nismo

Read more about the road-going Nissan GT-R Nismo is our detailed review here.