SeattleLion

It all really depends on Nissan's marketing strategy. No mainstream car maker that produces sportscars (like GM, Nissan, Mazda) really expects the sportscar to sell in tremendous quantity. I think most big car companies use their sportscars to generate excitement for the brand. This translates to increased sales for the mainstream, more profitable cars.

How many people go to a Nissan dealer with some interest in a new family car and then see the Z and fall in love. Do those people buy Z's? Not likely, especially if their spouse is with them.

I don't think that Nissan will terminate the Z due to sub 10,000 unit sales. However, if the Z draws a yawn from the automotive press, or worse yet, the car is ignored by customers, then the brand could die.

The stats quoted is very powerful evidence of the Z's strength even in a bad economy. My guess is that the market for sports cars in any given price band is fairly fixed. Market growth is probably tied directly to the number of people in a given demographic (age, income, etc.). I think the key indicator is market share within the price band. I don't know what those numbers are, but I know that if I were making brand decisions, that is the key indicator for me.

In the old days, when it took the best part of a year to retool for a new model, the capital investment required to build a car was huge. You had to sell a serious number of cars to pay off that investment.

Now, thanks to computers and automation, building a new model only costs a fraction of what it did 20 years ago. Now the same line can produce several models. Given that, and that the Infiniti G and Z share a lot of hardware (and software) in common, The cost of making a Z should be fairly constant regardless of sales volume. The tools, programs, and plants already "know" how to build a 370. In addition, the cost of marketing the Z is low. Nissan doesn't run a lot of ads for the product.

Car companies routinely make models that are loss leaders. The Honda Insight during its first years cost Honda more to make than the retail price. There are many other examples of this.

I suspect that the continued existance of the Z depends on Nissan's image of itself. Like Chevy, Nissan likes that it makes one of the best sports cars at a reasonable price that compete with cars costing twice as much.

It all isn't dollars and cents (or yen). This isn't only true of car companies. Remember those TV ads where Apple made fun of Windows? Those ads made a lot of Microsoft employees angry; so angry that for the first time in over five years, Microsoft committed hundreds of millions of dollars on TV advertising. Perhaps the Z is a point of pride for Nissan. Maybe it isn't terribly important how many absolute dollars the Z brings in. Maybe what counts is that the Z gives the Nissan engineers and other workers a place to build a car that is seen as a winner; a car that competes with the world's most respected car companies.

Just my 2 cents.