At the top of Mount Badass, there is one car, and one car only.  The Nissan GT-R has racked up awards like its owners rack up speeding tickets.  Motor Trend car of the year.  Automobile Magazine Car of the Year.  It narrowly missed the price cutoff for Car and Driver's 10Best, but took home Popular Mechanics' Best of What's New.  And it set a new lap record for a production car on the legendary Nurburgring test track, beating out supercars with sticker prices equivalent to five GT-Rs.  Nissan's brutal performance machine is ten pounds of badass for the price of five.

But the most incredible truth about the car all along has been that this is the base model.  A better one, we've been told, is on the way.

Details are here.  Like the Porsche 911 has the GT2 and the Chevy Corvette has the ZR1, the GT-R will soon have the Spec V.

Australia's Motor Report says the car will be officially unveiled on Jan. 8, 2009.  "Easily the biggest surprise" about the car "is the unchanged power output, as earlier rumours suggested a significant 'power-up' for the Spec-V."  Apparently, however, it will feature the same engine as the standard GT-R.

Instead, improvements focus on weight and grip.  Autoblog explains that weight has been reduced "with the replacement of the back seats with a carbon fiber shelf, along with carbon fiber front thrones, front grille, rear wing and brake ducts on the front lip spoiler."  On the road-grip front, "Carbon ceramic brakes will be hidden behind Rays 20-inch aluminum wheels wrapped in no-cost Dunlop tires, and the suspension is comprised of a retuned Bilstein Damptronic setup that is supposedly superior to the NISMO ClubSport package already offered." Pricing has not been announced.

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