Proper engine in the front, drive at the rear. Why aren't we getting this in Europe again?
Forbidden fruit. Always a strange topic to cover, the writer at once delighted at the chance to try something exotic but already trying to rationalise why it’s not sold here. But it would have been remiss of us not to sample the latest Z car while already in Japan to drive the Nismo product we
If you’re shopping in this aisle you probably place reasonable value on the silhouettes that got you hooked on cars in the first place. The Z’s designers have duly taken note. Perhaps the gauche red Nismo skirts rob it of a little purity, but those gorgeous lightweight RAYS alloys and the neat uptick of the rear pillar – punctuated by the classic Z badge – promptly earn my forgiveness.
And yet the first impression once I’ve finally released the handbrake and pulled away is of a resolved little GT car, the Z lolloping along quietly at low revs and feeling smooth and refined in the Standard setting of its drive modes . The engine’s lungs are big enough to just leave the auto ‘box doing its thing as you sit nicely ensconced inside, happy to make unruffled progress just basking in the aura of a relatively high-capacity engine driving a single axle.
The gearshifts feel a millisecond or two off being truly satisfying and you know within seconds this ain’t a DCT. Yet the nine ratios bring this car to life at fairly normal speeds; second tops out at around 50mph while third has roughly the reach of second in a Cayman. You feel nicely in tune with the engine, able to wring more out of it and experience the sharp howl of a hard-worked V6 when you really chase the revs.
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