Nissan drops the fans

In other words, the Z and the GT-R are old. Both have been on the market for over ten years and feel less relevant than ever. Instead of brand new versions ready to tackle the most modern sports cars, which Nissan fans clearly want, we've got improvements for an already fast, expensive car and an elegant color scheme for another. And one of Nissan's biggest problems right now is: what is this brand and who is it for?

Yesterday I was adamant that the 370Z anniversary of the 50th anniversary was a beautiful model. I am always, to be sure. If I had to buy a brand new 370Z now, I would absolutely like to have a red and white BRE badass livery. This car will please Litwood a lot in a few decades.

The problem is that there is no reason to buy a new 370Z. Literally zero. You can find its appeal in its design, or naturally aspirated V6, or its manual gearbox, or the fact that having been in production since 2009, many aspects of the old school attract him in the current technologies . world.

(I would say that enthusiasts can not do everything, regretting the age of the 370Z and complaining about the too much complexity and the new information screen car, but that's an argument for another day. )

So, if that's the case and you want a 370Z, buy it occasionally. Period, end of the story. Save several thousand dollars and get a used model from 2012 or 2016 or even 2018. And there is certainly a case for the Z on the ground used! Where are you going to get a rear-wheel-drive, rear-wheel-drive Japanese sports car north of 300 horsepower?

But you do not need to spend at least $ 31,000 for this car in 2019, and no amount of scratches or Alcantara will change that.

There is also something sad about the fact that the Z edition of the 50th anniversary is the same car as the Z edition of the 40th anniversary. It's a kind of shit from the C3 Corvette, and I'm not saying that nicely.

Let's look at another performance car that debuted this week as a case study: the 2020 Ford Mustang with the 2.3-liter high-performance group. Historically, the Z was more a competitor of the Mustang V8, but I do not think you can do it.

This Mustang, although reduced by two cylinders to the Z, has the same power, but not less than 80 lb-ft of torque. Its 10-speed automatic against seven. The fuel economy is significantly higher, it offers advanced technology and a considerably more modern interior, all at about the same price. I see no reason why I would have told you to put the Z on this Mustang. And when we talk about models like the 370Z Nismo that starts (!!!) at $ 45,790, we are completely out of place.

Assuming the 370Z is still in the year or the next two years, the Toyota 86 and Subaru BRZ come and go; he will have seen the launch of the Corvette C7, then his complete engine; three generations of Porsche 911; the life and death of the Genesis Coupe; he will have seen the new Supra, a new Miata, a new Fiat Spider, a new Camaro, as well as countless other fast BMWs and Benzs, hatchbacks and so on.

The fact is it's old, and the fact that the New York Motor Show becomes a showcase of the legacy of its performance cars is a bit ridiculous for Nissan. For now, it's a monument to the way these cars have languished.

The GT-R, at least, comes out a little better. I reviewed one last year and I was pleased to see that, even if it shows its age in some regions, it remains brutally fast, among the fastest cars in the world. It's an old Nissan that can still feature AMG, Porsche and Ferrari, and the latest set of improvements is solid. (I would add that it's unfortunate that the Z does not have an updated retarder, suspension and gearbox and a lighter weight like Godzilla did.)

At this point, the GT-R is a sort of custom-made, low-volume, six-figure performance car. And while it's undeniably fast, it does not have the hype it had 10 years ago – or even half a decade ago. How could he? The GT-R is old too. The world needs an R36.

And yet, rumors about a new GT-R, supposedly hybrid, have almost become cold. There are no prototypes, no camouflaged mules that perform tests in cold weather. We have never heard of these cars. We did not see anything that could indicate new versions.

As you can guess, the sales of both cars are not excellent. Nissan sold 263 Z in March; on average, it moves between 200 and 300 per month in America. 2019 is a difficult market for sports cars, probably the toughest since the 1990s, but Ford still managed to sell more than 6,000 Mustangs last month. Chevy has moved 4,200 copies of the Camaro. The market is always there, if you do it right. (The GT-R is steadily in double-digit sales every month, but has always been on the low volume side.)

More than any other Japanese manufacturer, apart from probably Mazda, performance cars put Nissan (and Datsun before it) on the map. Back in the day, club runners and tuners from the Zs and 510s helped create this brand and led people to use its more normal offers of sedans and wagons.

It's hard to say what Nissan stands for today, apart from cash on-hood transactions and renting the sedan you rent the next time you travel to Minneapolis for a work conference. And Nissan's problem is that over the years, fewer and fewer people remember those days of glory or what a BRE livery.

It's hard to even discern where Nissan's leadership has landed on these cars, or what their strategy was with them over the years. The fallen director, Carlos Ghosn – who has many more problems nowadays – wrote in the Nikkei Asian Review in 2017 that reviving the Z and the GT-R, it was "revitalizing our brand" and that the GT -R was "still [his] favorite car to drive today. Once again, she gets a pass, to be as fast and good in what she does. But did these two cars sink in pursuit of Ghosn's true passion: to gain more market share from the United States? More and more, it's like that.

Perhaps for Nissan, with electrification and autonomy appearing to be the future, this does not matter. If this is the case, it may be time for the company to stop behaving as it does.