Pop the hood of our 2009 Nissan GT-R and you'll find the term "Premium Midship" stamped into the heat-resistant mouse fur that lines the underside.
"Midship" is shorthand for mid-engined, which of course refers to a car with its engine located behind the driver but ahead of the transmission and rear axle.
Here the Nissan marketing folks have stretched the definition, employing the term "Front Midship" (or FM, for short) to indicate an engine that's ahead of the driver but behind the front axle. Since the GT-R is so bitchin', they call it Premium Midship.
The reason it's a stretch is simple: Whether or not the engine sits behind the front axle is a highly debatable point.
The twin-turbo engine clearly sits in between and partially ahead of the top of the shock towers. OK, the towers are reclined back a bit because of the front suspension's caster angle. Maybe, just maybe, the forwardmost cylinder's mathematical centerline -- not the entire cylinder, mind you -- is ahead of the imaginary line that defines the front axle centerline. It would take 3D modelling software to know for certain, and even then, there's a lot of engine block and front cover ahead of the axle centerline.
However that turns out, the GT-R is not a mid-engined car.
"The Nissan GT-R is a front-engined car, you Plebes!! I'm the midship(man) here! Do you understand? Look at the next photograph to see what a REAL front-midship car looks like. Now drop and give me twenty!"
Implying that the Nissan GT-R is a mid-engined car by applying the term "midship" makes even less sense than applying the term "4-door coupe" to any 4-door sedan with a sleek roofline and bad rear headroom.
That is all.
Dan Edmunds, Director of Vehicle Testing @ 21,624 miles
adantium says:
12:41 PM, 06/ 4/09
The car is balanced almost perfectly. Who cares about the marketing bullship? Obv. Dan does.
stephen987 says:
12:43 PM, 06/ 4/09
Is that a Cheetah?
dougtheeng says:
12:47 PM, 06/ 4/09
I like the navy quote. Interesting point about the car too.
huyracing says:
12:48 PM, 06/ 4/09
is it marketing or is it just what the engineers call it? because they do try to mount the engine as far back as they can...
mazdaspeed_jon says:
01:03 PM, 06/ 4/09
But don't forget that the transaxle is also rear mounted so in essence the balance point of the driveline is probably shifted more toward the middle of the car because of the distribution of the drivetrain components.
P.S. Thanks for bring back memories of my Midshipman days!
stovt001 says:
01:10 PM, 06/ 4/09
To be fair that engine is mounted pretty far back, but it is a stretch to call it a true mid-engine car.
ctsowner says:
01:43 PM, 06/ 4/09
The weight distribution is almost perfect. Besides, it's safer to have the engine in front of the driver in case of a front-end collision.
actualsize says:
02:01 PM, 06/ 4/09
1) I'm not saying the GT-R doesn't gave good balance and weight distributuion: It does.
2) Correct stephen987, that is a Cheetah. 5 points.
jkavanagh says:
02:23 PM, 06/ 4/09
ctsowner, engines don't really deform in a collision, so they don't absorb the energy of the impact. Rather, they transfer the force of the crash into the firewall. This isn't necessarily safer.
ctsowner says:
02:54 PM, 06/ 4/09
sure it is, haven't you watched this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LT6qix4-0Bo
jkavanagh says:
03:28 PM, 06/ 4/09
When you hit a snowplow with a vertical blade, sure, an engine in the way helps distribute the force evenly over the firewall. Nothing shocking.
In typical frontal crashes involving typical vehicles, however, an engine effectively shrinks the crumple zone available to absorb energy.
compliance says:
05:03 PM, 06/ 4/09
The RX8 is much closer to a front midship than the Z also. It's a dumb claim to make.
mx5r says:
07:02 PM, 06/ 4/09
by definition, a midship(mid-engine) car means that the engine's center of gravity is in between the front and rear axle. So, a front midship(front mid-engine) car would mean that the engine would be in front of the car, but back enough that the engine's center of gravity would be between the front and rear axle. The whole engine doesnt have to be behind the front axle for it to qualify as a midship car.
Which means that Nissan is not making a dumb claim nor streching the term, its just a difference of recognition of the term "midship"
s1gins says:
07:28 PM, 06/ 4/09
Enough with the complaints about the GTR, where is the darn suspension walk around! And the driving impressions, that's the car you should have taken to the Angeles Crest highway.
majin_ssj_eric says:
11:50 PM, 06/ 4/09
Well, most "proper" mid-engine cars don't have their engines fully ahead of the rear axle so why aren't they properly called rear-engined? This is a semantical argument. If the weight distribution is 50/50, does it really matter where the ad men say the engine is???
dougtheeng says:
06:23 AM, 06/ 5/09
That snowplow clip is awesome.
ktinsd says:
09:40 AM, 06/ 5/09
So what scale is that "real" mid engine Cheetah? Sure doesn't look like a 1/1 version.
lazyhater says:
01:21 PM, 06/ 5/09
I am with Dan, the engine of the GTR sit right on top of the front axle, it is no where near being behind it. Calling it mid engine is really BS. I would call the S2K mid engine, the engine is way behind the front axle: http://images.hondatuningmagazine.com/features/0705_ht_03_z+2000_honda_s2000+engine_bay_view.jpg
thehardcard says:
04:15 PM, 06/ 5/09
Has anyone seen Nissan officially refer to this as a mid-engine vehicle? Or any of their current vehicles? I don't mean heard some employee who may or may not have car knowledge say it, I mean official literature, executives, or engineering staff.
I read a lot of GT-R material, as well as a lot of Infiniti material and I have never seen such a reference. I just went nissanusa.com, infinit.com and their press site, nissannews.com.
Couldn't find the words "mid-engine" anywhere.
Front Midship and Premium Midship are proper nouns created by Nissan. I have seen them defined by Nissan as mx5r said, engine center of gravity behind the axle.
actualsize says:
05:38 PM, 06/ 5/09
"Midship" has been used for a long time in place of the word mid-engined in the automotive press. Nissan didn't invent it. I'm sure someone, somewhere thinks they're being clever, but at the end of the day it's kind of dumb.