Nissan gave the GT-R a clearly defined mission: annihilate nearly every other car on the market around a racetrack while providing seating for four, room for two sets of golf clubs and year-round livability, all for the price of a well-optioned Porsche Cayman S. Amazingly, it hits each of those targets, so long as the passengers are all Seacrest-scale and possessed of an uncommon spirit of cooperation.

Image Despite its technical sophistication, the GT-R gives the impression that its builders never dropped their focus on the driving experience.

The 2009 GT-R is heir to Nissan’s legendary Skyline GT-R, a hopped-up salaryman’s car that started out as an Asian version of the original Pontiac GTO and grew into a cult icon as a video game superhero. Even so, Nissan dropped the Skyline name from the GT-R, it says, because the new model is built on its own platform. That’s true, but I also suspect that the generic name is a marketing move designed to make people say Nissan with GT-R so that listeners will know just which car is being talked about.

Much has been written about the GT-R’s outlandish performance, especially at the track. What I wondered before driving it was whether the tactility, the pure fun of driving, got ironed straight out in the pursuit of low lap times.

For instance, Nissan claims that in turning laps at the Nürburgring course where it did suspension tuning, onboard instrumentation showed that a GT-R driver made fewer steering corrections than the driver of a Porsche 911 Turbo did, and the GT-R was faster to boot. Fine, but to what end? Aren’t precise steering adjustments part of the fun? If I want thrills without involvement, I can ride the Superman roller coaster at Six Flags.

Fears that the GT-R might be the second coming of the Mitsubishi 3000GT VR4  a ’90s-era twin-turbo, all-wheel-drive dreadnought that died as bloated as Elvis  should be put to rest. Yes, the GT-R is a four-seat coupe with a twin-turbo V-6 and all-wheel-drive. And it is loaded with treats like a paddle-shifted automated manual gearbox; an electronically adjustable suspension; and a choice among three levels of intervention by the electronic stability control.