How do we find the stories that hopefully entertain, enlighten, and educate you, our wonderful readers? Two years ago we used to scribble our bad ideas on scraps of paper, throw them into a wok, and Jason would close his eyes and pick something out. These days we rely on an army of highly trained media raccoons diving through automotive dumpsters. When they return to the Autopian substation (accessed via secret stairway, hidden behind a fake Harbor Freight tool chest in Beau’s private workshop) empty-pawed we just find stuff on Twitter. Last week I stumbled across a whole thread of people talking about the current Nissan Z like it was Schoedinger’s enthusiast car. The Z seems to exist on websites and in reviews, but there have been very few sightings of them in the wild. It’s one of those cars released to a great of hype and buildup, but in two years since its birth has seemingly completely dropped off the radar. I obviously have never seen one, because it’s not available here even though the UK is RHD like Japan and buys more enthusiast cars than anywhere else in Europe. There’s no business case for it apparently, and ever-tightening European emissions legislation played a part in this decision as well (wait a minute, I thought my shouty little island had voted to cast off such European tyranny?).
After reading contemporary reviews and consulting with our very own Canadian automotive Chat GPT equivalent, Thomas, it seems one of the main problems with the Z is that of positioning. Tracing a direct lineage back to the reborn 350Z of 2002, underneath the current Z is essentially a two decades old car at this point and doesn’t really offer the driving experience required against more modern competitors like the cheaper GR86 or the refinement against more expensive rivals like the Toyota Supra. Although it starts at $42k, you don’t get a mechanical LSD until the Performance trim which is a stiff $10k step up over the price of the base model. It’s simply too expensive for what it is, consisting as it does of very warmed-over 370Z leftovers.
How a car is placed in the market, according to the estimated purchase price, trim levels, and optional equipment availability is not the purview of the studio design team. Likewise, neither are decisions about what platform a car is going to use, or how much part content has to be carried over from existing cars. These high level corporate decisions will be made by the marketing and product committees, although the chief designer or his delegate will be in those meetings because they will have a say, but the design studio can and does come up with proposals on their own. After all, all it essentially costs the design team is time and resources they already have to hand. Sometimes they will come up with something that is simply too good not to build, but it might have to sit around for a couple of years until the conditions are right for it to gain approval to move forward to the next stage. The car I worked on after the L663 Defender, had several different versions sitting around in model form, ready to go after the initial release.
A Little Bit Of Z History (Again)
Nissan did something similar at the 1999 Detroit show when they revealed the 240Z Concept. It was a bit of a rush job having gone from sketch to model in a scarcely believable 12 weeks, but generated sufficient interest for a totally different production car to emerge from the Nissan Design America studio as the 350Z in 2002. The 350Z sold around 200k units – not too shabby. But the successor 370Z fared much worse, selling less than half despite being on sale for about three years longer. Why should this be? The thing about enthusiast cars is they cannot sell in enough volume purely to enthusiasts alone: they have to appeal to mainstream customers as well. Someone who wants driving thrills and performance above other considerations may put up with compromises in engine refinement, ease of use, gas mileage, or suspension harshness, but regular customers will not, no matter how well it performs on paper. For those customers, it’s all about the curbside appeal. It appears Nissan understood some of this with the Z, giving the new 2022 model a more cohesive, subtly retro-influenced exterior design, but apart from adding more power didn’t do a great deal to bring the underlying engineering more up to date.
While I don’t think the design of the Z is bad, there are of course a couple of issues forcing compromises in areas that I think could be done better. The first of these is money, as in not spending enough of it. Having to reuse the body in white (the unadorned structure of the car without any parts or external panels) from the 370Z means the roof line is less than ideal. Secondly, the need to slavishly reference the original 240Z has forced the area around the headlights of the Z into some funny shapes, not helped by the large rectangular grill opening that dominates the nose of the car. Since I’m no longer a junior exterior designer for Land Rover but head of the prestigious Autopian Design Studio, we don’t have to worry about such meaningless trifles as engineering budgets, unless David has blown it all on Aztek-related shenanigans. I don’t want you to think I’m ignoring very real cost constraints just to make easy changes on paper – but I do want to see if spending a bit more wisely could improve the appeal of the Z away from its very externally obvious 370Z underpinnings.
How The Old 370Z Holds The Current Z Back
I’ve fed images of both the 370Z and the current Z into the Computer-Rendering Autopian Photos mainframe and made a GIF switching between the two. Peter normally takes care of this sort of mundane task but as we found out a few weeks ago, he doesn’t actually exist. So I had to make it myself. What a bloody liberty. Having the high point of the roofline as the header rail (where the windshield meets the roof) isn’t automatically a bad thing, but it needs to be handled with care. Cars like the Nissan Juke and Land Rover Evoque have both done it in the past, but the difference between those cars and the Z is they have the roof and rear windshield defined clearly as two separate surfaces and parts of the car. The Z does not. Its roof line just becomes the rear windshield and tailgate, without a distinctive change in direction to disseminate between the two surfaces. It makes for a lazy line with no tension, reduces the amount of volume inside the passenger cabin, makes the door apertures smaller, and forces the rear windshield into a shallower angle, reducing rearwards visibility. Let’s see what happens if we alter it slightly, by pulling the roof line up and increasing the angle of the tailgate:
I think this is much better, with a more clearly defined separation between roof and tailgate, and results in a larger side glass area for greater visibility, a more airy cabin, and a bigger door opening for easier ingress and egress. It helps define the proportions better and ties the car more closely to its forebear. For the non-enthusiast customer, a car like the Z is as much a style choice as it is anything else, and no one likes banging their head on the cant rail and ruining their hair every time they get in or out.
Moving on to my other bone of contention with the Z is the nose. The main issue is that big black rectangular grill opening, and how it affects everything happening around it. If you look at the surface underneath the headlights, you can see it has to curve upwards quite sharply to meet the line coming off the hood. This gives the Z a bit of an upside-down ice-cream scoop thing going on. Look at the image above and you can see what I mean.
Torch And I Had The Same Thoughts, Which Is Disturbing
Before Jason knew a real car designer, he identified the same problem and had a go at remedying it himself. At the front of the car, you have to be careful when altering things because of airflow requirements and the positioning of various sensors. We can see the Z has what is probably the active cruise sensor in the lower half of the grill opening so we can’t cover that up. There’s also a parking sensor visible just below the headlight, and we can’t move that without a load of tedious meetings and engineers complaining, so I’m leaving that surface well alone.
I’ve made the leading surface of the hood angle downwards a bit more sharply, so the surrounding surfaces don’t have to move so much to meet it. This means we can keep the original intent of the designers with the grill opening, which was to visually reference the original 240Z. I’ve also taken some Z (vertical axis) height out of the air vent, just to give it a bit more room to breathe in the bodywork surrounding it. Some of this could possibly be alleviated by changing the shape of the headlight unit, but without examining a Z close-up in the metal it’s hard to know exactly what the surfaces are doing here, so I’ve left the lights as they are. Also, after the body-in-white lights are probably the next most expensive part to tool up (easily into millions), so you really don’t want to be changing those on a whim.
Finally, let’s move around to the rear three-quarter view and see what the changed roofline and increased angle of the tailgate look like. I think this is much better and doesn’t fundamentally alter the character of the car.
Alright because I’m not a monster let’s put all this into some gifs to make Peter’s job easier, and so you can compare the changes I’ve made.
The newly released Nismo version of the Z does get a new nose which helps improve the Z a lot, but there’s one small problem. The monkey’s paw has curled yet again because it’s only available as an automatic that starts at $65k. That really was a product planning meeting I needed to be in. I’ve added a picture of it here, so you can compare the official Nissan effort with my own changes for the standard car.
When the first 350Z appeared in 2002 it was a smooth, solid-looking coupe with some interesting details that didn’t lean too heavily into the retro-wave that was fashionable at the time. Existing simply as a modern Z car was enough, and customers responded. When the 370Z replaced it in 2008 Nissan lent far harder into a JDM-yo! vibe with quirky graphics and almost cartoonish proportions and volumes, that visually looked a lot heavier and with its plunging roofline and bulging surfaces, a lot more compromised. Sales fell off a cliff, and with the new Z Nissan is attempting a course correction, returning to a warmer, more nostalgic look that pulls influences from across the Z-car timeline. The problem is this has resulted in a tension between what the aesthetic promises, and what the 370Z underpinnings can actually achieve. It’s a bit like me suddenly dressing like a normal person, and not looking like I’ve just walked out of a satanic death cult meeting. I might look more approachable, but I’d still be the same cantankerous gobshite I’ve always been underneath.
Have I helped make the Z a more saleable, approachable prospect, or would Nissan be better off resorting to tried and tested sales boosting methods like lopping $5k off the price and bolting in an LSD as standard? Or maybe, and here’s a crazy notion: bring the fucking thing to Europe.
All images courtesy of Nissan Media
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I’ve seen one in the flesh. I thought it looked…nice, but as everyone here is saying, unfinished. Your changes make it much more palatable and give it a bit more grace that it very much deserves, but alas…there are many other reasons why the Z isn’t selling.
Dealerships are the main culprit. Every one of these that I’ve seen listed is marked up into the stratosphere, and they’re not exactly compelling buys at MSRP to begin with. Who the fuck wants to pay C8 or 718 prices for a 20 year old Nissan?
And to piggyback off that, these are too damn expensive. For the same price as the base one you can get a barebones, crowd annihilating Mustang GT that has more space, MO POWAAAAA, and makes V8 noises. At the top end where the Nismo and kitted out regular ones sit you’re at the aforementioned C8/718 price. Those are mid engined and will make a Z look silly on a backroad.
There’s also the M2, Bavaria’s pony car. If the Z started within striking distance of a Toyobaru and didn’t put every single good option behind a $10,000 package, maybe it would work. Also, the Zs transmissions kind of suck. The first batch had huge issues with the manual grinding low gears and the automatic is a traditional slusher that they use in their SUVs. That’s a far cry from what’s on offer with the competition, even if the Mustang’s Getrag may leave this mortal coil at any moment.
Have only seen 1 in real life. The owner had already done some stupid crap to it. Lowered/slammed, extra wide new wheels and tires that looked ridiculous, Pep Boys style body trim, Black tinted windows, including the top half of the windshield.
It looked great! /s
It’s always hard for me to separate the art from the artist when it comes to JDM cars/tooners. I love Japanese cars, but the scene around them (at least here in yee haw land) is so profoundly cringe. Did the Z you saw have a Brazzers license plate cover or a “ass, cash, or grass NO ONE RIDES FREE” sticker? If so you hit JDM bro bingo and may collect your prize…a VQ attached to the worst aftermarket exhaust known to man
This one was painted a sort of metal flake gold, and being kind here, it looked like a non factory color? (I hope.)
But also had some after market black tape stripes on both the rocker panels and roof/hood that hurt the eyes to see.
And some sort of fart can exhaust, which was tic inducing when he passed me at 60mph and floored it to impress me. CP for certain. YMMV
These sound like shit stock but I’d imagine they sound even worse with bad aftermarket exhausts. Although I daily a car that makes fart noises so maybe I can’t talk.
Sure, and when the car’s not running you blame it on the dog.
I still can’t believe an LSD is part of a $10k option package. The much cheaper GRZs come with one standard and they have a lot less power (and weight). I’ve only seen one and I live in an area where I’d expect to see a number of them (relatively decent number of everything else around, including more exotic cars).
The Z is a fantastic looking car. The design is absolutely not why you don’t see these on the road, as comments below have already elaborated on. I honestly can barely tell a difference in what was changed here besides seeing the straight belt line… which yeah, ties into the 350 quite a bit, but I don’t think it is better so much as just different.
I’d still love one of these some day, but at half the price they are currently asking. Even considering having two snails under the hood now, there is much too small of a delta in performance compared to the 350/370 to justify the price.
TBH I can see minor differences between the two. It is probably individual taste which is better. I am neutral they are bothe equally bland. I noticed that while this story handles design elements well the tiny little things like costs are ignored. Many love the old Z Cars but making them and charging twice the price is not a solution.
It reminds me of my sojourn to Vermont for a few years. The housing market far surpasses the employment market. To get an affordable house I told my realtor to find a fixer upper. So cheaper I fix up and value increases farther. Nope my realtor figured finding me a fixer up earned a premium price because it’s what I asked for.
I mentioned costs and that’s part of the problem. It feels like they did the bare minimum to make a new car but still want the same money. I think they really should have spent a bit more and kept the current prices or do what they did, but charge less for it.
I think they could perhaps remedy this by releasing a model with absolutely no options at all other than the better brakes/LSD and a price tag that starts with a 3 in Freedom Dollars. They might not make anything on it, but it would get more of them out there and give Toyobaru shoppers something to think about. Make it manual only too so the gatekeepers can be happy and call it something fun.
The Fairlady perhaps? It’s right there.
The next time somebody suggests that the BRZ/Toyota 86 should have a turbo, I need to remember all of this. A BRZ/86 with a turbo would cost about what this Z car costs, and it would be sales-proof like the Z car too.
It’s also not just as simple as bolting on a turbo. All the running gear needs upgrading to cope with the added power, which adds cost.
Sorry my bad. Must have missed it.
looks identical
Also, they are not selling because they are not producing them except in tiny batches….and dealers are marking them up. I see at least 1 lambo a day but still have not seen one of the new Zs.
And I went to the effort of making gifs to make it easy to spot the differences. Et tu, Stop Making Us Register?
Yours is considerably better but I want it with the Torch’s snozz. The giant rectangle is a homage run amok.
Like I was going to give him any credit. He couldn’t even let me have the medical emergency. That was MY thing, man.
Are they even making the thing? The Nissan dealership I pass to exit my neighborhood hasn’t had a single one on the lot.
They basically are not….this is all a fools errand, sales are not down because of design, sales are down because they won’t make them
I like the changes, but if they signified a change between a 2024 and 2025 model, I don’t think that the average person could tell the difference.
Now a $5k price drop, people would notice. Or go back to a non-turbo engine and drop the price by $10k.
At the same time, as a taller gent, I appreciate the extra headroom at the end of the seat travel.
Nice work Adrian!!
I love the changes. My first car as a teenager in the 1980’s was a rusty 240z. This brings back good memories. Your changes just work for me.
BUT as a current Miata owner, I would never trade in for the new Z as a purely fun car.
Oh And the gifs make it look like it’s breathing in too. Hehe. Tuck chin, puff out middle. I’m familiar with that look when I look at myself in mirror sucking in my gut and puffing out chest.
Tits out ass in.
I think I know what the problem is with the design of the Zzzzzzzzzzzz …
I’ve seen a couple out in the fresh air, both parked and driving and poked at one at an auto show. It just looks unfinished and, yes, the pricing and positioning don’t make it a sensible buy.
The 350Z was a game changer. I ordered mine 6 months before they went on sale, and had, I think, the first one in Florida. The attention it got was staggering. A couple of weeks after I got it I took it to a Historic Sportscar meet at Daytona. There was a big group of Porsche owners there and at one point I had a parade of Porsches going past for a look and a constant stream of questions. I only kept it a couple of years as the early ones had a bunch of issues ( like alignment that could not be corrected because there was no adjustment…), so it had to go before the warranty ran out.
That was 20years ago. Im still the target customer but i have zero interest.
It’s still basically the same thing. Why would anyone care now?
It needs to be killed, completely rethought, or cheap enough that theres no competition and we all know which way Nissan will go.
Never buy the first year of production.
Never before or since. But at the time there was nothing else I wanted. And that orange was irresistible…
The 350 wasn’t just a futuristic looker back when it debuted, but it also backed up the talk with the walk. I got mine a few years used after the HR refresh, and it would walk on contemporary GT’s and SS’s despite having 2 fewer cylinders. It was a legitimate contender in the segment, looked great, was easy to work on, and had a healthy aftermarket and community.
Sadly, as you said, no one cares now because this is the same car, except it corners a little better and gets to 60 a second faster but costs twice as much.
Nissan really needed to get back to the roots of the OG 240 and make it affordable performance. This Z should have been reset as a BR-Z with 300hp. They even could have kept the same dinosaur VQ, just make it a bit smaller, lighter, and much cheaper.
So basically, they should have just made the dam IDx and called it a Z.
Looking it up, in 2002 it was up against the SN95 Mustang with a 4.6L V8 making a whopping 225HP and a solid axle. In 2024 it’s the same price as a Mustang GT for 80HP less.
The second it was announced BMW were going to put a stickshift in the Supra there was no saving the Z35.
The Toyota fanbois were moaning it wasn’t a real Supra. Fucking enthusiasts. Absolutely the worst.
But the Nissan dealers would much rather sell 20 new Rouges than a Z, and Nissan corporate would rather people buy the Ariya than a Z
Thanks for the flipper pics. The changes are subtle enough to be hard to spot.
The front 3/4 flipper view also looks like a Hungry Hungry Hippo.
nom nom nom
Is it not selling well, or is it not selling because of the $30k dealer adjustments every dealership seems to add?
They’re all over Autotrader at near enough list:
https://www.autotrader.com/cars-for-sale/all-cars/nissan/z/san-jose-ca?newSearch=false&searchRadius=0&sortBy=derivedpriceASC
I am with you on the last point, the biggest issue is the price. Slight tweaking of the shape is helpful but the price and as stated, the LSD included in a lower price. There are just not enough in what it is at the price to take buyers away from other cars.
While Adrian’s refresh subtly links the design to the classic Datsun GT’s pf yore, those are not the features that move metal at my local Nissan lot.
Instead, I suggest Nissan add design features from their most popular model in 2024: The 2009 Altima! Bring the energy with:
– At least one donut spare in lieu of a standard size tire. Yes, that donut spare has been rated for 100+ mph pursuits and curb hopping.
-Bubbled tint on rear window;
-Expired temporary tag;
-Pine tree air freshener, preferred flavor: “Second Hand Vape”
-What better way to accentuate the rear deck separation than rust holes and fluorescent Zip-Ties.
-Any Torch-approved tail lights, as long as turn signals are either inoperable or only shut off when the engine does.
Also rip the rear bumper halfway off on the passenger side and the front bumper halfway off from the driver’s side, and take a sledgehammer to the driver’s side front fender and both doors, maybe dump a can of paint thinner on the roof for good measure, then you have a proper modern Nissan.
As a 2009 Nissan Altima owner, I resemble this.
Until I got to the animated differences, trying to spot the changes was like playing spot the difference in a Highlights magazine while hopped up on nitrous while waiting to get a tooth pulled.
Subtle changes when viewed side by side, but it becomes far more obvious with the gif.
You are lucky. My dentist only shares the gas after the tooth has been yanked.
Something is off about that guy.
Great gifs though.
The real solution is a ZX with T-tops. A rear wiper would be nice, too.
And a triple DIN stereo with a graphic equaliser.
This may sound stupid, but for all the time these things have been on sale I have YET to see one in the wild. Granted, I don’t live in a major metropolitan area, but I’m not in BFE either. 2 hours from Chicago, 3 from Detroit, and we take many long-distance trips a year. Still haven’t seen one and my kid LOVES the Z so we’re looking. I’ve seen more Citroen Meharis on the road than I’ve seen 400Zs (One).
Three Major Mistakes.
Nissan’s marketing department has been subpar for quite some time. They need to start w/ the younger generation but also appeal to the generation with some money to buy.
New programs like a car storage program local to them so people who already have 2-cars in their household and purchase and store a 3rd fun car. Conditions today don’t make it easy for single people or families living in dense housing to park a car indoors.
I saw plenty on US Autotrader at about list, before writing this, and to your point about trackability, not being a capable track machine may be why YOU don’t want one, but it’s not why they are not selling.
Oh, Nissan HAS a marketing department? Who knew, I thought they only had a “work with rental car companies” department. (JOKE)
I drive a Miata so I think I’m at least approximately in the target market but I always completely forget that these exist. Whatever the opposite of “living in your head, rent-free” is, that’s the Z’s relationship with me. And I can’t quite say why. Sure, it’s expensive, but so is everything these days. Sure, it’s not practical, but 2-seaters generally aren’t. And I don’t find it beautiful, but plenty of cars aren’t, and it certainly isn’t ugly. For whatever reason, I think it’s “just fine”. Not sure whether other folks feel the same way, but “just fine” probably isn’t enough to inspire a lot of people to fork over their hard-earned money for a sporty car.
The people who bought them 15 or 20 years ago are not going to buy one now. The 30 somethings who SHOULD be buying them are not, probably because Discord told them it’s a 20 year old platform.
As a 30 something who actually owns an old 350Z I should be right in their target. But I have zero desire to buy this new Z, or ever aspire to. Its competitors have improved massively since this platform first came out and this just hasn’t to the same degree. Besides a new engine and a touch screen it’s basically the same as my car from 20 years ago (the interior door handles are exactly the same, for example). The world has moved on and Nissan hasn’t kept up. Same story as most of their offerings these days.
The changes you’ve made do improve it, but it needs more than just some design tweaks.
Always seemed to me like the 350/70 were victims of the “hot rod” design trend of the ’00s – high beltlines and low roofs for a cool chopped look that was nonetheless hard to live with. Which in turn probably turned off a fair amount of buyers. Back in the day, it wasn’t uncommon to have a sport coupe like this as your only car…now, it’s fairly rare.
This seems to channel the 240s a lot more, more upright and flowing. I like it. Glad the taillight panel gets to stay…I really like that.
Look at the shape of the cant rail and the high point of the roof on the 350 compared to the 370. On the 350 the high point is higher, and further back. It’s a much less compromised volume.
When the 350 came out, the Audi TT was all the rage so the designers tacked on as many TT tropes as possible. When the 370 debuted, the TT was forgotten so they tried to harken back to the Glory Days of Z. The 400 doubled down on heritage but were still stuck with a TT skeleton.
Not discounting the work done here, but I don’t think the styling has ever been the issue, its the perfomance compared to other sporty coupes on the market, and the cost itself.
Completely agree. And will take it one step further: the issue is that it is a sporty coupe – an endangered species if there ever was one on four wheels.
Yeah, these tweaks make a better looking car, but the Z isn’t a bad looking car to start with, it’s the price that’s really holding it back. Performance and technology lackings can be excused if the price is right, but it’s more expensive than the competition while simultaneously being less capable. And you’d expect the opposite, if anything, because of how old the platform is, so much of the development costs have been long since amortized
Honestly, knocking $7,000 off the base price would be the single most effective thing that could be done to boost sales. The second most effective thing would be stretching the wheelbase slightly and cramming in two back seats, but nobody wants to hear something like that
Really the object was to make it more appealing at the price point, by making it somewhat less compromised.
And it does do that.
Still wouldn’t envy Nissan salesmen trying to shift it, although their job might be getting a little easier, what with the Camaro and Challenger being discontinued, the new Charger hitting a long delay and big price bump, and the Mustang’s usual Ford Kwality nonsense. The herd is thinning
Don’t need to fix the design, fix the price.
…and actually have them available to buy.
yeah, price and availability is what ruined it. Now most people have moved on over a year later. The style improvements autopian they made are nice, but none of them are game changers.
I looked on Autotrader US before writing this, there’s plenty sitting at about list price, so they are out there.
I hadn’t look after the initial roll out, I’ll have to do some browsing. Thanks!
I just did a quick check on cars.com. I have 1 Used available at 52K in my entire state. Haven’t checked autotrader
Definitely. Price is the primary issue.
I agree;
What price do you think is fair for the market from an MSRP perspective?
Looks like the cheapest you can get is ~ $42k
That still seems like too much since a 2024 Mustang GT starts at $44k, BMW 230i M sport is ~$42k
Would the Z at sub $40k sell? At $35k?
$35k feels more realistic, maybe slightly more for one equipped with the LSD. The Nismo is bonkers I can’t believe the price of that.