Acceleration Test: Nissan Skyline NISMO Takes on BMW M3 Competition and Lexus IS 500

Beginning with the Nissan Skyline NISMO, the good folks at Start Your Engines ran each car twice from zero to 100 clicks: first in regular mode, then in sport mode. In addition to how many seconds are required to hit 100 kilometers per hour, the Japanese publication also measured acceleration G-force.

Before going any further, it should be mentioned that a Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170 can pull 2.004 Gs on a prepped surface. Start Your Engines recorded an average of 0.53 Gs in the Skyline NISMO, which required 5.28 seconds to reach triple-digit speeds in standard mode. Curiously enough, it couldn’t do better than 5.30 in sport.

Internally referred to as V37, the Japanese market Skyline is best described as the Nissan-badged sibling of the Infiniti Q50. The NISMO packs 420 ps and 550 Nm from six cylinders, two turbochargers, and a displacement of 3.0 liters. Otherwise put, 414 horsepower and 406 pound-feet make it torquier than the Z NISMO for the US.

Next up, Start Your Engines clocked 0.66 Gs on average in the BMW M3 Competition xDrive. Gifted with a straight-six rather than a vee-six, the German sports sedan reached 100 kilometers per hour in 4.48 and 4.01 seconds, respectively. BMW says the all-wheel-drive version is much obliged to reach that speed in 3.5 seconds, whereas the rear-drive counterpart requires 0.4 seconds more.

The last entry is the Lexus IS 500 F Sport Performance, which is the only car of the three with free-breathing V8 muscle hiding underhood. Currently the second most powerful series-production car in the Japanese market after the Nissan GT-R, the IS in 500 flavor cranks out 481 ps (475 hp) and 535 Nm (395 pound-feet). In the United States, it makes 472 hp and the same kind of peak torque as the Japanese market version.

Easily the best-sounding car of the three, the IS 500 F Sport Performance also proved slowest: 0.53 Gs, 5.33 seconds in normal mode, and 5.32 seconds in sport mode. Instead of bashing Toyota for not giving this fellow a more powerful V8 and a quicker transmission, bear in mind that Toyota created a unique product. No other D-segment sports sedan in production today comes with a naturally aspirated V8, and this particular V8 sounds the business.

Due to increasingly stringent emission and fuel economy regulations, the Toyota UR engine family is definitely living on borrowed time. Toyota has made it clear by switching to a twin-turbo V6 gasser in the Land Cruiser 300 series, an off-road colossus that sadly isn't available in the United States.

Instead, prospective customers are offered the Lexus-branded twin. For model year 2024, the Land Cruiser for America is actually the 250 series, which is better known as the Prado in other markets. Not quite as capable as the 300 series, the 250 comes with a turbocharged I4 hybrid setup exclusively. Its Lexus equivalent is the V6-powered GX.