Report: Nissan settles GT-R transmission class action suit
September 21, 2009 by George Skentzos
The Nissan GT-R rocked the motoring world when it arrived on the scene, offering truly supercar performance at just a fraction of the price.
Although when the GT-R finally found its way into showrooms it quickly became apparent that there was a consequence for all this performance with the transmission becoming a costly Achilles heel for many owners.
With arguably the worlds most effective and efficient all-wheel-drive system on board, it was a tall order to ask the gearbox to bear the brunt of its performance with many breaking after just a few short months on the road.
The cause was usually the first-generation Launch Control system which could result in catastrophic gearbox failure and a $20,000 repair bill which was not covered under Nissan’s warranty.
As GT-R owners got together to file a class action suit, Nissan had already realised this issue by introducing a softer, new-generation Launch Control system (LC2) in its revised 2009 GT-R.
This dispute has now reportedly been settled with Nissan offering any owners with the first-generation LC system a new 5 years/60,000 miles once they upgrade to LC2.
Transmissions with LC2 will be fully covered by Nissan for breakages as long as VDC is left on – if Launch Control is used without VDC on then any warranty claim is voided.
Furthermore, where Nissan was previously able to detect whether Launch Control had been used without VDC enabled and void a customer’s warranty, it is now Nissan’s responsibility to determine whether operating LC with VDC off was the direct cause of the failure.
So now, if you risk a full launch with VDC off and all is well, you get to keep your warranty.
This decision only applies to owners of the first generation GT-R in the US. All Australian-delivered GT-R’s are the updated 2009 model which means they are unaffected by this issue.
Source: NAGTROC
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So being in Aus this bit of news isnt relevant for Aussie readers All it does is show how incompetent Nissan USA is! ….hmm pretty much falls inline with all things American
That’s a brains trust comment all right, considering the car is built in Japan. How is it anything to do with Nissan USA and in particular what sort of logic concludes that a Japanese car built with a weak geargox is related to all things American?
as there is a lot of non nissan, private imported first gen ones here,
they will want to be very carefull with launch control as they have zero nissan warranty..
so mechanical abuse gets rewarded… happy days for backward cap wearing rich boys everyhwere!
what, do these people use launch conrtol at every red light or something? you don’t need launch controle to beat these crappy ricer cars, and on the track, well damn if you have skill you don’t need launch control
Yes.
Yes and no, it’s kind of hard to dump the clutch @ xRPM in an auto…
According to an article I read Oz delivered GTR’s don’t get the much vaunted launch control (is this true or not?) so instead of the much talked about 3.5 seconds 0 – 60mph we Aussies have to make do with a paltry 4 secs 0 – 100km/h. 4 seconds is fine thankyou very much. Even in stock form without launch control the GTR would blow 99.9% of the cars on the road into the weeds. So why even risk the tranny for only a couple tenths of a second?
Why build a car with a flimsy transmission, sell it, and when people use it as intended disown the warranty.
Typical Nissan warranty – just ask Nissan Patrol 3.0 diesel owners how good the Nissan response is to poorly designed engines blowing up. In Europe they were all replaced, in Australia the owners were mostly shafted…..
Why – well its all about image [or should I say the Badge].
If the car has a respected iconic name or even cult status such as the GT-R; There are those who won’t particularly care about how inferior certain parts of the car are [let alone the car itself]; they will learn to live with the various problems or quirks that the car may have…. they just love the fact that they are able to say “I own a GT-R”…. and the car companies know it.
I agree “Nissan Warranty” what warranty I am one of those Patrol owners that have an 18 month old patrol that has never been driven close to Nissans “tough” claims yet the clutch has died. Then got told by nissan its fair wear and tear and it will cost $4000 to fix so much for 3year 100,000 km warranty
So what happened to those owners that already damaged their transmissions before LC2 was introduced?