MinisterofDOOM wrote:AZhitman wrote:If you'll look back, I drove the pre-production 370Z extensively. My biggest complaint was that it's heavy, and a mite ponderous... More of a GT car than a true sports car. If they can shave off 300-500 lbs and keep power levels similar, performance should remain comparable.
All well and good, but maybe the Z was SUPPOSED to be a GT?
It's the same thing I said with the new Mallfinder:
Why not just make it a new model instead of abberrating an existing, established, beloved nameplate?
Once the Z started putting on weight going into the ZX line (280ZX and up), the Z became a boulevard cruiser IMO. Every now and again, you'll see one that blows your socks off performance wise, but, like the Mk IV Supra, most of them just look sexy, push the rollers of a dyno really well, and hard park it like no other.
The Z33 at least tried to get back to what made the Z a homerun. Affordable, quick, and fun. I test drove a 370Z a year or so ago, and I was underwhelmed. My 240 with a tired T25 has more pep and go. The G37S I drove the same day felt even slower and heavier, not surprisingly.
Nissan needs to step back and realize that they do have an open market space they need to attack. The slippery slope they stand on right now if this plan comes to fruition is that the Z has a lineage that has helped sell the car. The Z is already filling its role well enough and there is no need to try to shift it to a new market opening just because Nissan dropped the ball 5 years ago when they SHOULD have been developing a platform to compete against the Subiyota and Hyundai. I was taken aback when Nissan didn't follow through with their usual tactic of releasing a new S chassis a year after a new GT-R, and then when the rumor mill of an S16 ground to a halt when Nissan flat out said they weren't developing it. All of the press generated back then was a perfect opportunity to have taken the reigns of a market share that needed a car to step in early. Now, they've lost the momentum of word of mouth, they've lost any kind of "we did it first" mentality by stepping back into the econobox RWD market before Subaru, Toyota, and Hyundai. And with Toyota's new "Supercar" (read spiritual success for the Supra), Nissan thinks it's a good idea to shift the primary munition it has against that to compete in the $20k market?
Nissan execs pay marketers good money to analyze trends that can make money. I think they paid the wrong people, and now those people are scrambling to fill in a void they knew needed filling years ago. The time has come and passed, and this sounds like a rash knee jerk reaction to a market shift that Nissan dismissed years ago. At this point, the best thing Nissan could do is spend a year or two scrambling to make a small platform that utilizes the suspension designs used in the Z34, slap a RWD juke motor with a turbo on it, a 6 speed, and release it to the wild. Leave the Z where it is, and slot something else into the spot. There should be no fear of delineating the line up and over saturating cross-platform market share as the Z will continue to sell to the people who have always bought it, and the new car will sell to people who are looking for that first fun car out of college after they get their first job.
