Nissan has a long history of creatively borrowing ideas from other car companies to make their cars better—and I mean that in a positive way. There’s a lot of skill that goes into taking a promising but struggling innovation, and iterating on it until it works in the real world. Nissan also has a very long and rich history of domineering success in the world of motorsport, and used to be a titan in the world of performance cars. A lot of their success came from the audacity to look at what others were doing well and asking themselves, “how could we do this better?”
Unfortunately, that wasn’t quite apparent in my time with the 2024 Nissan Z Performance. I’m starting to think they should really consider going back to the idea of looking at what their competitors are doing and taking inspiration from that—because they seem a little lost with this one.
The original Z’s engine design was a near carbon copy of what Mercedes was doing at the time. They actually bought the licence to it from Mercedes, and then very successfully iterated on it for years. There’s no shame in this; almost every V8 in England for decades was based on a Buick design. What matters is what you do with it. Nissan did very well with it for decades.
When they were designing the Z32-generation 300ZX that would carry Nissan through the 1990s, as well as the R32 GT-R that went on to become a legend that ruined every racing series in which it competed, they took cues for those cars from the Porsche 959. That’s because Porsche was the undisputed king of being so dominant in racing that they ruined everything in which they competed, and the 959 was the culmination of everything they had learned. Twin-turbocharged engine management, electronically controlled all-wheel-drive, active torque vectoring—all this came from Porsche, but what matters is what Nissan did with it. Porsche almost bankrupted themselves doing all that, but Nissan deployed it at a fraction of the cost, and then made it even more effective than the mad scientists in Stuttgart could have ever dreamed of.
What’s wrong with the latest Z isn’t the fact that it’s on an old architecture, or the fact that it’s using an older engine design. Most, if not all of my favourite press cars spent a long time on the vine and they’re all sweeter for it. The Z’s 3.0-litre twin-turbo V6 sounds ferocious and pulls like a missile, but only after it’s had a beat to gather boost. It’s also very fussy about cool temperatures, and requires a strict diet of 93-octane gas. And it gets worse.
I have gone on at length about the importance of throttle calibration and engine response as a central tenet of what makes a car satisfying to drive. When you tip into the throttle and let go of it you expect the engine to respond; you expect revs to rise and fall in a linear manner that matches what your foot, and what your thoughts, are doing. Here in this particular application, rolling into the skinny pedal nets you an unsettling delay before getting an ungainly heave in return, that can make anyone look and feel like a talentless amateur. I stalled the Z four times on my first day with it because I started letting off the clutch before the engine acknowledged me.
Letting off the throttle is almost worse. Just like its on-throttle response, Nissan has dulled it so much that the throttle stays open and the revs rise when you push the clutch in to shift—even if your foot was fully off the throttle before beginning the shift. It takes a beat for the revs to fall and for power to build back up before rushing towards the next awkward, slow shift. It’s a slow staccato of power delivery that saps all the fun out of the Z, because it has absolutely zero rhythm.
Despite the new Z having a rev-match function like its predecessor, even that feels kind of lethargic and does nothing to help upshifts. It almost feels like the only way to get the car to drive somewhat satisfyingly fast is to mercilessly pound the ever-loving snot out of it, with no regard for mechanical sympathy or good taste. It has a no-lift-shift function which actually almost kind of works, but so far as I can tell, it’s only available when you use the launch control—which actually kind of doesn’t work, as the Z always bogged on me. I don’t if I’ve ever been this frustrated with a “fun” car before. It almost feels like trying to dance with someone who is actively trying to step on your toes.
The Z’s chassis almost feels right. There’s a very harmonious, intrinsic quality to it—until you start pushing it, because the Z too softly sprung. It has a good set of bones, and I’ve been made to understand they actually do shine in the Nismo variants—which conveniently also cancel the drunk-and-disorderly power delivery with their wrongfully bemoaned automatic transmission. Still, they’re not generating a lot of goodwill here. The Z feels well-balanced, it has agreeable transient behaviour when powering out of a corner, but it’s too lackadaisical to inspire any real confidence or consistency.
On top of all this, I recently drove another very retro-inspired sports coupe. It also has a six-speed manual, bolted to what’s also an aging engine situated between the frame rails of a refreshed but fundamentally aging platform. Coincidentially, the Ford Mustang GT Performance Package was also painted blue—yet that car was brilliant. It’s sharp, snappy, engaging, and properly dialed in. It felt fun and didn’t get in its own way at any point. The Mustang does everything the Z tries to do, but significantly better and for less money. This last one really, really stings.
I get that Nissan doesn’t have nearly the engineering or financial might of Ford, but where they really excel is in calibration—decisions and details that don’t cost much of anything, you just have to choose to do them. The Z has gone the wrong direction with those details, and they’ve been going the wrong direction for years. The 20-year-old Infiniti G35 Coupe we featured a few months ago had the exact same, awkward throttle calibration and long, clunky clutch. It’s not just Ford who figured this out. Mazda has nailed it and BMW figured it out, which means Nissan’s old rivals at Toyota have figured it out, too. Drive a stick Mustang, Z4, Supra, even a Miata, and report back. This is the path Nissan should be heading down, because the Z could be magnificent if they learned from its competition.
I don’t want to spend this whole piece harping on the latest Z, because it’s not without merit. I think it looks great; the retro styling cues borrowed from the most seminal Z cars look fantastic. The shifter feels precise and well-weighted, the twin-turbo V6 pulls hard, and the optional Nismo exhaust sounds ferocious. I like the interior for the most part; the materials feel good, the seats are fantastic, the infotainment is easy to use, the all-digital gauge cluster is all business and looks slick. But it does still sting a little when I’m sitting in a $62,000 car, yet the heated seat and window switches are virtually identical to the decades-old G35 I mentioned above.
That’s another huge point where this car falls down. I normally try not to harp on cars for price, because I know there’s a ton that goes into choosing a price point. On top of that, developing any car—let alone something as niche as a sports car—is hideously expensive. I understand there’s so much more going on than meets the eye, but to put it politely, the latest Z is nowhere close to a competitive price point. Nissan used to be able to offer more for less with cars like this, but this new Z doesn’t really offer more, and it isn’t really offering it for less, either. I know the leather-and-Alcantara seats, Nismo exhaust, and forged Rays wheels aren’t cheap, but it’s not particularly compelling when the Mustang GT Performance Package we drove came in at a hair under $60,000 as-tested, and the manual Supra isn’t that much of a jump.
Nissan, I know you can do better. Don’t get complacent. Don’t rest on your laurels. Do what you need to do to win, even if that means asking others how to do it. You made the Z a world-beating sports car before. I know you can do it again. I don’t think the recipe for the 2024 Nissan Z Performance is too far off, you just maybe have to look to another chef to see how to bring it all together into the delicious dish it ought to be.
