350Z - All About the Fun.

[AZhitman]

Open the trunk on a new Nissan 350Z roadster and plastered on the inside of the trunk lid is a small decal that reads, "How To Store a Golf Bag." It tells you volumes of what this car is all about, or, more precisely, what it is not about.

It is not about hauling kids to the soccer field. It is not about hauling lumber and sheetrock from the supply yard. And it is not about taking the family to the mountains, unless the family is limited to two duffers and their clubs.

There is one overall, quite focused and rock solid purpose to this car: fun. Fast fun. And Nissan clearly feels golf is an integral part of that purpose. Which brings me back to that trunk -- it is 4 cubic feet, about one quarter the size of a normal sedan trunk, and, yes, it will hold that golf bag, as long as it is carefully inserted in the prescribed Nissan manner. And if you are an artful packer, it will also hold the golf shoes.

The 350Z roadster (or convertible, if you prefer) was introduced in the summer of 2003, a year after the popular 350Z coupe, and it comes in three trim levels -- enthusiast, touring and grand touring. And if that's not enough, you can always opt for the two-seater coupe, which has five trim levels. But it's only the roadster that gives you unique options on the fun-word -- top up, top down.

The 350Z is the latest version of a historic Nissan (read Datsun) lineage of sports car that began more than 35 years ago with the Datsun 240Z, a car way ahead of its time in nearly every aspect -- design, looks, engineering, power and performance, among other things. The original Z car had a 2.4-liter, six-cylinder engine that ripped up the highway with 151 horsepower, zero to 60 in 8 seconds and a top speed of 125 miles an hour, according to the http://www.conceptcarz.com Web site. It had rack and pinion steering, front disk brakes and, "with a price tag of just over $3,500, it cost much less than anything else on the market," the Web site said in its paean to Z cars.

The new sports car conquered everything around it and, given Datsun's racing experience (it had already campaigned the 1960s-vintage 1600 and 2000 roadsters), it wasn't long before it was ruling SCCA C-production races in the 1970s. The Z became one of those cars that the public glommed onto, a true sports car that was inexpensive and could be souped up any number of ways. The most obvious was simple and relatively cheap: change out the wheels for fatter ones, shinier ones. At the other end of the spectrum were the kit-car manufacturers who could turn your by-now ubiquitous Z car into a passable replica of a Ferrari GTO. And in between were the legion of aftermarket companies that supplied air dams, spoilers, fender flares and anything else that might make your Z look different.

The point was that the Z was a wildly successful car and, given its success, Nissan changed it by evolution, rather than revolution. It went 240Z, 260Z, 280Z and so forth as the engine size increased. (Of course, there was the one bombshell Nissan lobbed that is still debated inside the halls of the company -- in 1983, they changed the U.S. brand name from Datsun to Nissan, to conform with the company's worldwide branding identity.)

In the 1980s, the Z car got a unique boost when actor Paul Newman won race after race in a 280ZX, and in 1990 Nissan brought out perhaps the sleekest version of the car, the 300ZX, which lasted through the 1996 model year.

When Nissan brought out the latest Z car, now with the 3.5-liter V6, they radically changed the way the car has historically looked and felt. In many ways, it's all to the better.

On first glance, it's the aggressive stance of the car that gets you. The wheels are as out to the corners as you can get them without turning them into a set of kid's training wheels on outriggers. Sliding into the perforated leather seats (heated, by the way, for those cold damp days), you're immediately struck by the real no-nonsense feel of the three-pod cluster of tach, speedo and fuel gauge/water temperature in front of you and the accompanying three smaller instrument pods on the dashboard center (voltmeter, oil pressure and, in a sop to the fashionistas, the dial with various bits of not really essential info), all aimed at the driver's face.

On the road, with its short-throw six-speed gear shift, the 350Z feels solid -- more solid, in a sense, than its close competitor, the Honda S2000. With the top up, however, it has that strange look of a convertible that was designed to never have the top up, no matter what. Think of the Porsche 356 Speedster, or even today's Audi TT roadster. They all have that hunkered-down look, covered by a top that's out of scale -- it looks as if it's too small for the car. On the 350Z, other than keeping the top down all the time, there's not much you can do about it. And with the top up, it's actually pretty quiet for a convertible. There is little wind noise, but there's nothing you can do about the fact that all you have over your head is a thin canvas top. When the tractor-trailers are in that next lane over, you will definitely hear them.

The shifter, by the way, was designed by somebody (or some committee) that understood the art of making the damn thing shift from gear to gear without hunting for a cog two gears up or down, a lesson some manufacturers are still struggling to learn -- think of the hideous downshift from fifth to fourth that accidentally lands in second, sending the tach needle in a wild arc clockwise and the back tires into that telltale embarrassing chirp as all around you gaze over with the look that says, "new to the world of stick shifts, are we?"

Top down is how this car really needs to be driven, and the electrically-driven way it goes down is the usual Rube Goldberg method of having the windows automatically go down, a solid boot cover pop up, the top goes into various folding operations, then nestles down in its own area just forward of the trunk and the boot cover comes back down.

This is where this car lives: the small piece of vertical glass just aft of the cockpit reduces some of the wind bluster at speed and so you really only feel it on the top of the head. But you readily feel everything else -- the speed, the bouncing of the car's suspension as it rounds the corner, the winding out of that 300-horsepower engine.

For those of us who also ride motorcycles, driving this Z car up through the twisties of that private patch of well-known curvy road we've all been on is the closest you're going to get, on four wheels, to that rush of a superbike motor screaming into the world of 10,000-plus RPM. And that ain't so bad.

[jEzTeR]

It is fun to get up early in the morning.

Load up the golf clubs.

Open the garage door and fire up that sweet sounding car. Back out on the street and head off to the golf course.

As you pop over the first small hill and go into your favorite curve the sun finally makes its way out from behind the wall of horizon. Then when you pull into the parking lot at the country club you notice the caddy's rushing to be first to help you load your clubs onto the cart.

It never fails to get a "cool car" or some other positive comment.

As the day goes on you find yourself rushing to finish because you want to go tear up some more back roads.

"Fun: Fast fun" is right!!!!

[Chuck350Z]

I like when your first at a red light. Cars are beside and behind you. You slip the clutch into first and wait for green. Green...! You take off to about 5500 rpm slam second and take it up to 60. Hit 3rd and ease up to 80mph, then you look in your rearview and see everybody so far back...way back.

[nsrZ32]

Z cars are such fantastic things