Hi there!
As of about a week ago, I'm the proud owner of a 'magnetic black' 2016 370Z NISMO.
I’ve had several Z-cars over the years; 240Z, 280Z, and a 300Z-turbo. And all of them were amazing cars – when they worked: The 240Z caught fire, the 280Z had a perpetually sticky cold start injector that they could never fix, and the 300Z had the differential fail because the whale oil in it went bad.
I wish I was kidding.
But despite the problems I've always loved the "Z" cars... Especially the 300 – it was an '88 with the fully digital dash and all the bells and whistles, and was a bit like driving around in a spaceship.
Anyway, here we are almost two decades later and it seems that Nissan has mostly worked the bugs out of the Z-car platform - at least everyone who has one tends to really love the thing.
The biggest aspects of the 370Z that
I like are that it's simply the best looking coupe ever made, and the general "old-school" of the thing: no fancy computer parameters controlling the suspension, steering, accelerator, brakes, etc. And there’s no intricate all-wheel drive tomfoolery shifting torque around for you.
It’s also naturally aspirated, so the throttle response is essentially measured in however long it takes your brain to move your foot. The handling is magical because it simply sits really low on a wide platform and has HUGE sticky tires. Motivation is managed by simply creating lots of horsepower and torque, and then sending it all to the rear wheels however you, the driver, deem necessary.
The by-product of this being a mechanical symphony that makes you feel all tingly in the right places with an extra helping of going sideways...
Then there’s the interior; totally driver-focused. Everything needed is exactly where it needs to be. Getting into a 370Z is like putting on pants, and once you’re settled into the cockpit you honestly assume someone is about to hand you your helmet and the ground crew will be clearing you for launch in a moment.
I also got the 7-speed automatic versus the 6-speed manual… I know people will scoff at the A/T, but these days any flappy-paddle unit tends to be fairly good to a guy who grew up with "3 on the tree"... But to be perfectly honest, I'm just old and lazy now and I want to drive the car around with a minimum of fiddling.
There is one really big down-side to the car that I've found so far, but it has more to do with where I live really… The car may be a low-slung racetrack deity and a highway hero sitting on foot-wide rear tires with 1 inch tall sidewalls, but it simply cannot handle snow – and they don’t even bother plowing the roads here where I live in Colorado…
So, with it having recently snowed when I bought the car, just getting it from the main road to the garage was harrowing as the rear-end was perpetually trying to pass me – at 5mph. And getting the car between the goal-posts and into the garage, which is up a sloped snow-covered driveway, required far more butt-pucker than I’m willing to deal with on a continual basis.
But! This is why I also have a '13 Fiat 500 Abarth - so while the Z is hibernating in the garage I can still go pick up parts for all the things I want to do to it…
