At the end of the day, the problem is that it's apparently not easy to make a FR (lets leave FF's and AWD's out of it for now) sporty car that is attractive, fast, handles and brakes well, and is affordable to what passes for the new middle class (i.e., dubious upward mobility potential at a time when stagnation or even downward mobility is commonplace...).
The FR-S, Z, MX-5, and the latest iteration of the Mustang in particular are all variations on those themes -- yes the Mustang is a "pony car", but the very concept of a pony car is based on Ford (and GM) attempting to fit all three of the aforementioned attributes into one vehicle, even though a pony's emphasis has historically been on muscle over agility.
Quite a few of the "OG" gang sold their Z's and bought Mustangs (at least to the best of my knowledge...), hence my earlier comment a few pages back, while comparisons to the FR-S are rooted in the fact that there are simply very, very few affordable cars (say, under 60K) aimed at being truly "sporty".
In the US, muscle is always a big selling point; in much of the rest of the world, agility tends to be better appreciated (exception: Australia?)
Whether or not anyone sticks with the Z for its next generation will come down to how well Nissan crams the key "sporty" attributes into their car at a manageable price. Otherwise, the power junkies will skew towards muscle, the cone dodgers will look for more lithe cars, and the folks with more money will just buy a more expensive car.
All in all, though, Nissan did a very good job with the Z34, and their (rumored) plans for the Z35 all sound pretty reasonable, at least to me.
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