Wow! A lot to address. Body Dampers, of which in total there are six, do make a difference in chassis rigidity.
the 90-10 comparison is completely subjective. I drive 99 Road and >1% track. The Nismo is simply more fun to drive, better to look at, and all around a better sports car. If you are scared of a few more bumps, don't buy one. I enjoy them because I see both sides of the compromise.
Personally, I like my sports cars to over-steer just a bit rather than plow like both the base and sport 370s do. I also addressed that the only performance difference between my base touring and a sport were the differential and the brakes (I had 285s r and 245s f). The brakes, as we all know, will certainly make the car stop shorter, but also act detrimentally to the handling of the car.
No offense to Edmund's or Car&Driver, but I had 22K miles on my first Z a 350 and 22K on my first 370. As well as countless thousands behind the wheel of the following: C6 'Vette, C6 ZO6, Turbo IS300, and Mazdaspeed 6. No one can tell me that I am not qualified to judge if one car is superior to another.
That being said I don't doubt at all that a base 370Z 7AT could marginally win against me in my Nismo at a drag strip. If you buy any Z to drag you bought the wrong car.
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When was the last time you did 230MPH in something with 4 seats?
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