Quote:
Originally Posted by Chuck33079
I think we often overstate the importance of enthusiasts to car makers. The Z34 was a sales disaster. I'm shocked they made it as long as they did. And while the idea of a Nismo minivan made me facepalm so hard I got CTE, isn't it kinda what the other manufacturers are doing that we give them cool points for? Take a high(er) selling model and add a performance trim level? That's what BMW and Benz do, right? It's easy to amortize a new trim level for something that sells a lot of units.
The Z is a harder sell to the accountants. Why would they spend millions and millions of dollars to update a vehicle that sells 5k units every year? IF we get a new Z34, it'll be a trickle-down from the new Q. Even if a new Z doubled the sales, that's what, 10k units a year? Between the price, lack of back seat and the fact it doesn't stack up with its competition on paper, it's never going to sell like a Mustang or Camaro.
Nissan doesn't owe enthusiasts anything. Period. They owe their shareholders. And shareholders are into profit, not niche models that don't sell. It's not greed, it's self preservation. If management makes decisions to spend a metric fuckton of money on a model that sells less than 10k units and uses a whole lot of model specific parts instead of focusing on volume sellers, management gets shown the door.
Toyota and Honda arguably abandoned enthusiasts for a decade, and guess what? The bottom line got stronger. More people buy transportation appliances than toy cars. And it's only going to get worse. Enthusiasts are on their way out. Between Millennials not buying anything but smartphones and governments pushing economy and electrification, we should consider ourselves lucky they didn't take the Z out behind the shed and shoot it like Old Yeller.
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Sadly, I have nothing to argue about over this post.
Even Porsche is now an SUV company that makes sports cars. At least in Canada, according to some industry articles I read, more than 50% by dollar value and well over 50% by units sold are Cayenne / Macan.
We need to consider ourselves lucky that there are still performance cars out there at all in these days of increasingly stringent environmental, fuel economy, and safety regulations. That's notwithstanding the relatively small demand for these compared to people movers.
Consider a performance Leaf or minivan to be mission creep - slowly designed to get us all into numb cars. That way, we won't miss the sound of a NA V8 in a lightweight mid-engine 2-seater when it's gone for good!