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Road test: Nissan Z

Thursday, 12 January 2023

The new Nissan Z is has landed.
The new Z is a real looker, even with that very square grille.
The new Z is a real looker, even with that very square grille.
That rear end is simply superb.
That rear end is simply superb.
The digital dash is minimal but it serves its purpose well.
The digital dash is minimal but it serves its purpose well.

The Nissan Z is about as iconic as it gets. It’s been around since the 1960s and the latest incarnation continues a lot of the traditions started more than fifty years ago. You’d forgive Nissan for mimicking Toyota and teaming up with another manufacturer to keep the badge alive for another generation, or even letting it fade away entirely, but it hasn’t. The new Z - no numbers in the name any more - is all Nissan.

OUTSIDE

The Z pulls a lot of styling inspiration from its heritage. There are circular-ish headlights, split and lit by LEDs, a long bonnet with angular creases, a viciously raked roof and the coolest rear lights on probably any car on the market right now. They’re a modern interpretation of the units found on the 300ZX, using LEDs to trace the twin tube rear lights of the ‘90s Z.

**READ MORE:

A new twin-turbo V6 powers the Z, making a decent gob of power.
A new twin-turbo V6 powers the Z, making a decent gob of power.

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The chassis is a heavily revised version of the 370Z’s bones, which came from the 350Z.
The chassis is a heavily revised version of the 370Z’s bones, which came from the 350Z.

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Wet roads made for poor traction, something the rear wheels are already lacking in.
Wet roads made for poor traction, something the rear wheels are already lacking in.

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The silver strake along the roofline is apparently called the ‘katana’, which makes sense. It gives the exterior a nice accent, splitting the roof from the body. You can have the roof in black if you want, or body colour.

You can see the subtle point in the nose here.
You can see the subtle point in the nose here.

You might have also noticed the grille. It’s very square, and it remains square in the metal. But it’s hard to capture the slight point of the nose in photos, which gives much more of a shark look to the front.

But should you buy it over rival Supra?
But should you buy it over rival Supra?

The older Zeds also had a similar grille, but the size of this one was borne from necessity. The new turbocharged engine comes with an array of coolers (engine, AC, oil, transmission, intercooler) and they all need air. Nissan did experiment with having a bar across the grill, but apparently a 3cm strip of plastic translates into 9cm of blocked airflow, considering the turbulence created.

INSIDE

The cabin is a combination of old and new, a byproduct of Nissan developing the car themselves and not leaning on another brand for help, but still wanting to save money here and there.

There are those two digital screens – the Sports view on the instrument cluster was derived from the GT500 racer – but then there’s single-zone climate control with dials that feel like they’re from the Navara ute, the seats have electric fore/aft/back tilt adjustments (mounted facing up on the inside of the seats for some reason), but manual depth/thigh rotary dials and a lever for the driver’s lumbar support. There’s no wireless charging either, and the heated seat switches also feel lifted from the ute.

The seats are supportive though, and the steering wheel is nicely designed with physical buttons.

I love the trio of analogue gauges mounted on the dash. You can configure the screen to show you turbo pressure and voltage but you can’t see the turbo speed anywhere else, and it’s great fun watching them rise and fall. Possibly too distracting…

UNDER THE BONNET

Beneath that creased-up bonnet is a 3.0-litre V6, smaller than the previous 3.7L unit but benefitting from two turbochargers. Power is now a healthy 298kW, up from the 247kW in the old 370Z, while torque is now rated at 400Nm, from 365Nm.

Curb weight isn’t up by much either, going from around 1547kg to 1581kg. Not a massive number on paper, but the 370Z felt heavy to drive as well. More on that in a bit.

Like the interior, the chassis is partly carryover from the 370Z. Nissan has made a handful of changes to strengthen this and lighten that, but the core is 370Z. More accurately, it’s the 350Z’s FM platform, which debuted all the way back in 2001. That also goes a way to explaining the car's proportions.

Nissan will happily sell you a Z with a six-speed manual, and it’s definitely the one I would go for, but this one uses a nine-speed automatic shared with Mercedes-Benz. Okay, so Nissan didn’t build the entire thing itself. At the Australian launch of the Z last year, I said the automatic “earned its keep”. But after more than a few hours with the car, I’m not so sure.

ON THE ROAD

Those initial few hours with the auto Zed in Australia were more highway cruising than corner carving, and doing that sort of touring thing, the transmission is great. It hunts those upper gears rather tenaciously, always keeping the engine at lower speeds to save fuel and preserve emissions. It works too, with fuel consumption reading around 11L/100km, remarkably close to what Nissan claims.

The engine has enough torque to pull the car without dropping cogs, so it doesn’t feel laboured if you need to squirt from 80kph to 120kph, but that programming means that when you’re off the straight and into the twisty stuff, the car always seems to be in the wrong gear. Paddle shifters solve the problem, but it’s annoying if you’d rather focus entirely on steering. There is a sports mode, but it feels like it just shifts the ratios up by one, so you’re sitting in fifth instead of sixth, while keeping the same high-gear-hunting shift logic.

New tyres would also go a long way. The standard Bridgestone Potenza S007s are pretty good, but the rears are often overpowered here.

The front end isn’t as razor-sharp as you might expect from a modern sports car, thanks to those old bones and fixed suspension underneath, but after a little familiarisation, it becomes a lot of fun. More old-school, which should appease some fans. Go into a corner too hot and the front will push, while too much gas on the exit will have the rear wiggling even with traction control enabled. You probably won’t be setting lap records, but if you like really driving a car, you’ll be having a lot of fun.

Steering could be sharper; a bit of extra weight and connection to the wheels would go a long way. The engine sounds pretty good when wound up, but it’s happiest sitting between 5500rpm and 6500rpm. It’s all internal noise too, the Z is pretty quiet outside. Definitely room for improvement there. There’s a bit of tyre noise, as you might expect, but active noise cancelling tech kills the worst of it.

VERDICT

The question here isn’t if Nissan has made a worthy successor to the Z badge, because of course it has. The new Z might be flawed but it’s a hell of a lot of fun to drive. No, you’re wondering if you should buy this and save $15k versus the Toyota Supra, or spend the extra for the German-Japanese hybrid.

If you’re going automatic, go Toyota. The ZF eight-speed in the Supra is brilliant in all areas, plus the BMW straight-six sounds much better than Nissan’s V6. I’d say the Z drives better, being a bit more unrefined in the best way, but the nine-speed is too annoying to recommend.

But the manual option is a different story, one we should be able to tell in the near enough future. Based off the Australian Zed drive and what the Supra drives like in automatic guise, I’d probably go Nissan with the manual. Don’t hold me to that, though.