Before getting too carried away about Nissan and the Z's, let's do the math:
Assume annual sales of 12,000 Z's (round number)
That comes to 10,000 per month at an average invoice of about $30,000
That is $300 Million x 12 months = $3.6 Billion.
Z's are not discounted and there are few, if any, dealer specials. Assume a 15% profit margin (on the low side) and the Z contributes $540 Million to the bottom line.
No matter how big the company, that is not chump change.
Now, consider what Nissan has to do to make the Z family:
The engine comes from Infiniti virtually unchanged
Same for transmissions and exhaust. Ratios may change, but not by a lot.
The interior is subcontracted. Most of the electrical system is as well.
Brakes are from vendors. The same is true for most every piece of hardware.
Nissan probably makes the frame and body panels.
The point is that even as an exotic, the Z is a positive contributor to Nissan's bottom line.
In the future Nissan's investment could go up if it decides to do a special-built Z engine. That is unlikely. The Z is like a lot of European sports cars; the main parts are from other cars. Car makers use vendors to provide almost everything except engine and drivetrain.
The main investment in a new car is the engineering costs and tooling for body panels (if a vendor isn't supplying them). Production lines are no longer tied tightly to a vehicle. A single line can produce every model Nissan makes in a single day. In practice this doesn't happen, but it can.
Marketing costs for the Z are very low. Beyond supplying dealers with brouchures, there are few other costs. The Z advertising budget is tiny. Hell, Nissan racing support is limited to a few stickers and a discount on parts. (yeah, they also pay small amounts for winning)
Given all that, wouldn't you think that there is a small team of engineers at Nissan who dedicate their time (or most of it) to the Z, GTR, and GTx?
Things have changed. Big car companies like Nissan aren't against low volume sports cars if the cost of design and production is offset by profits. But they aren't about to spend big bucks to develop anything new that can't be reused in other, better selling cars.
At least, that's how it looks to me.
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