Modern Classic: Nissan 350Z

As far as hackneyed sales slogans go, ‘now is the time to buy’ has to be right up there. But just as a broken watch is correct twice a day, once in a while, now is indeed the right time to put your hand in your pocket for something. When that something is a Nissan 350Z, it’s worth examining that claim in a little more detail.

Most mainstream enthusiast cars follow a typical value curve. They start bullishly when they’re the fashion item du jour, before falling sharply. After around seven years, the curve levels off. They’ve fallen from favour, they’re long out of warranty, and their images have been tarnished as a result of falling into the hands of the wrong sort of owners who can afford the asking price but not the cost of upkeep. It’s all very familiar.

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From there, though, interesting and often unpredictable things can happen. Many cars trundle along in the bargain basement, falling into the category of rare but nobody cares: Ford Probe, Hyundai Coupe, Chrysler Crossfire. Then there are the shooting stars that everybody regrets missing out on when they were languishing in the bargain basement: cars like the BMW E30 M3, Mazda FD RX-7 and Toyota Supra RZ.

Between these two extremes are the more interesting vehicles where there’s every reason to expect prices to pick up but, for one reason or another, that’s yet to happen. Among these cars you could nominate the Alfa GTV, the original Audi TT, the Honda Prelude VTEC and the car we’re running the rule over here, the Nissan 350Z.

First introduced to the Australian market in 2003, the Z back catalogue is well known. From the 1970 Datsun 240Z, through the US-mandated 260Z, the flabby 280ZX and the blousy Z31 300ZX, the formline only came good again with the 350Z’s immediate predecessor, the sleek Z32 300ZX of 1990. Frustratingly, those iterations of the Z line we held to be the least competent were the biggest money spinners for Nissan thanks to an American market that put little premium on agility and design refinement.

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The irony that the 350Z was an American project isn’t hard to appreciate. By 1996, Nissan had no Z car in the US, the Z32 300ZX twin-turbo having become a victim of the yen-to-dollar exchange rates, effectively pricing it out of existence. This rankled with Jerry Hirshberg, the studio president of Nissan Design America (NDA), based in San Diego, California.

Hirshberg reasoned that although the company was focused on what would likely prove solid income-earners like the Maxima, the Sentra and the Xterra, a halo car was needed to remind the company what it stood for.

“To our way of thinking, we had killed off a part of our soul, a part that defined who we were,” said Hirshberg. Letting the Z nameplate lay dormant “was a bad idea, even though it could be justified economically.” In other words, the business case to revive the car seemed based on emotion, rather than dollars and cents. As a result, the first sketches of the new Z car were a strictly internal NDA skunkworks affair. There was zero budget.

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Enter Jason Vines, Nissan’s newly minted head of public relations. You might know him from a rather famous book – ‘What Did Jesus Drive?’ – where he tells the story of his experiences in automotive crisis PR. Vines’ antennae were always hyper-alert for any opportunity, and after visiting NDA, he asked Hirshberg about his ideas for the Z. The latter tapped his head, indicating that they were all internalised and Vines wanted to know what it would take to get them out into the real world.

Using his experience from Chrysler, where the company had shown long-lead concepts more often as a way of energising the morale of its own staff than the general public, Vines realised that Nissan could use a dose of this exact pick-me-up. He pestered Nissan’s division head Mike Seergy and secured nearly enough funding for the Z to be built up as a full-sized clay model by Metalcrafters, a vehicle fabricator based in Fountain Valley. They rendered three-quarters of the car as a finished model, with the remaining quarter what Vines opportunistically dubbed ‘works in progress’.

In the summer of 1998, the car was shown at Nissan’s internal roadshows in New York, at Smyrna, Tennessee and in Los Angeles. Although the car was a mixed bag stylistically, the Z genie was out of the bottle. Nissan’s management found themselves somewhat backed into a corner, feeling obliged to move with the Z project. Just not that particular design.

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By 1999, a refinement of that shape had appeared and was displayed in public at the Detroit Show as the Z Concept. Hirshberg was sanguine about its chances, explaining later that what they were selling was the idea of building a new Z rather than that car in particular.

A howling blizzard had shut down the Detroit metro and kept half of the world’s media out. That was no bad thing as the car was a disappointment. Nissan’s top brass were aghast at this bulbous and unexciting concept car. The designer of the 240Z, Yosihiko Matsuo, described it as dull and recommended that it “should not be regarded as a suitable replacement for the current model.” The evening before the show, Vines had received a furious phone call from Nissan’s top brass, claiming that Nissan’s chairman, Yoshikazu Hanawa, had not green-lit the Z program and wasn’t willing to do so. After threatening to go on hunger strike, Vines managed to talk Hanawa round.

Further jeopardising the venture was Nissan’s parlous financial state. Just 10 days after the roadshow, a merger with Renault was announced, with Carlos Ghosn appointed as COO. Ghosn visited NDA as part of his global tour within the new conglomerate. Hirshberg knew that Ghosn was a fan of sports coupes and a Z32 300ZX owner. He outlined his vision to resurrect the Z car for a new generation.

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The mercurial Ghosn knitted his hands, frowned and paused for a long time before looking up and uttering one word: “Done.” The sole proviso was that it had to come to market for less than USD $30,000. All of the expensive componentry that had gone into the Z32 would need to be stripped away. No turbochargers, no four-wheel steering, no ritzy BBS wheels – this was to be a throwback, a blue-collar hero car that shared its mechanicals with other products within the business.

Having created a nakedly retro-looking concept, Hirshberg performed a stunning volte face, perhaps cued by a few words of encouragement from Ghosn. “Retro lost its edge when we crossed the millennial threshold,” he said. “Now we run the danger of cars becoming costumes on wheels.”

In fairness, he’d seen how the late ’90s retro designs such as Volkswagen’s New Beetle, the Toyota Classic and the Plymouth Prowler initially delivered strong sales, but, once the novelty had worn off , orders fell off a cliff . Given the required time in market of a Z car, that just could not be allowed to happen. The styling had to reflect Noughties design values and Nissan instigated a competition between NDA and its Japanese and European studios.

The European proposal was by far the most radical, with the Japanese preferring more conservative, cab-forward organic shapes. As a result, the European studio was dropped from the race and, on 5 January 2000, the number of proposals were trimmed to six: two from NDA and four from Japan. The most striking design of the bunch was from NDA: the work of 30-year-old Ajay Panchal.

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In 1996, the Leicester-born designer had won the Transportation Design Category at a competition held at the Royal College of Arts, and the prize was to a design centre of his choosing. He wound up at NDA in San Diego and was so enamoured of the place that he’d secured an interview and started work the same day.

Panchal’s proposal featured striking rear wheelarches giving the car a powerful, rear-drive stance. The jutting vertical exterior door handles, vertical headlights and bold geometric forms were anything but retro.

The two remaining proposals were evolved into full-sized models. Carlos Ghosn and Nissan’s design chief Shiro Nakamura oversaw the voting process, with 14 managers casting their ballots. All but one preferred NDA’s design. The Z car was about to become a production reality. Jerry Hirshberg decided that his work was done and retired in June 2000.

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Productionising the Z was the next challenge. Prior Z cars had sported hatchbacks, but Ghosn was a stickler for chassis torsional rigidity and suggested that a car with a boot would be preferable. A compromise came via the fitment of a large strut brace across the rear end, allowing a hatch – albeit one that was compromised in terms of practicality.

Cost-saving measures included sharing the FM chassis with the Nissan V35 Skyline and a host of Infiniti products. Likewise, Ghosn, dubbed ‘Le Cost Killer’, insisted that the Z would share an engine, too, and the 3.5-litre normally-aspirated VQ35DE V6 powerplant, built in both Iwaki, Japan and Decherd, Tennessee, found its way into vehicles as diverse as the Renault Espace, the Nissan Elgrand and even the Dallara race cars used in the Formula Renault 3.5 Series from 2005 to 2011.

The ‘350Z Concept’ was first shown at the 2001 Detroit Auto Show and it received a strongly favourable reaction. Road cars were trickled to the press in 2002 and Nissan had hit its price targets head on. The base car opened at $26,269 in the US while the flagship Track model listed for $34,079. That $8000 premium bought you a set of spoilers, 18-inch rubber, forged aluminium wheels, Brembo brakes and some clever underbody aero.

Nissan took 6200 orders in the first week that order books were opened and over 30,000 sales were registered in 2003. What’s more, the creation of the Z spawned the Infiniti G models – at the time the biggest money spinners for Nissan’s luxury arm.

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Wheels sourced an early review by Tony Swan from the US launch event and he was impressed by the Z’s execution, but complained of persistent understeer, likely a built-in safety-first handling bias. Perhaps Nissan had learnt from Audi’s travails with the first, somewhat oversteery TT coupes.

Our first opportunity to put the 350Z up against some local rivals came in March 2003, when it comfortably saw off the challenge of the Audi TT quattro and Subaru Impreza WRX STi.

It found COTY 2004 a hurdle too far, however – testers slating the kickback in its steering, the coarse engine note and the underwhelming quality of some of its cabin materials. In June 2004 we engaged in a spot of dynamiting fish in a barrel by putting the 350Z up against the Chrysler Crossfire 3.2 and Alfa Romeo GTV V6, both of which it steamrollered.

Nissan made some changes the following year, when it launched the car you see here. The manual-only 35th Anniversary version was introduced to celebrate 35 years since the introduction of the 240Z and it was a gem. It saw power step up from 206 to a chubby 221kW, thanks to higher-lift cams, revised pistons and a clever cam-phasing system. The cabin got some attention, too, with aluminium interior inlays, heated mirrors and better materials. The throw of the transmission was also shortened and the Anniversary rode on a set of unique alloys.

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So when can we expect the long-awaited uptick in 350Z values? The answer to that question is when they get rare enough. We’re already starting to see prices of clean, unmolested manual coupes tickle upwards and it’s only a matter of time before cars like this 35th Anniversary become a distinctly uncommon sight on Aussie roads. Only then will many realise what they could have picked up for relative peanuts and it’ll be too late. So there’s never been a better time to buy. No, really.

Nissan 350Z 35th Anniversary Specs

• Engine: 3498cc V6, dohc, 24v
• Max Power: 221kW @ 6400rpm
• Max Torque: 353Nm @ 4800rpm
• Transmission: 6-speed manual
• Weight: 1545kg
• 0-100km/h: 5.8sec (tested)
• Price: from $40,000