The current Z car has become somewhat of a joke to buy brand new, as it’s older than the Iraq War at this point. But its overdue replacement just showed up in a teaser video, and it looks fantastic.
In a teaser video released supposedly showing off the near-future of the Nissan lineup, we get taken down the models from “A” to “Z,” which is just a clunky way of pointing everybody’s attention to the new Z car design that shows up in heavy silhouette at the end.
It’s certainly a retro-inspired design, with divided circle daytime running LEDs in the headlights to give that classic circular headlight profile of the first-gen 240Z, and a rounded rear-end that we only catch a quick glimmer of. It appears in the front we’re getting full-on 240Z throwback, but in the rear we may be getting a flavour of the 300ZX too.
The silhouette immediately reads “Z car” to me, and I’m not entirely convinced they have done anything at all to the roofline and shape of the windows (which is not a bad thing).
The car is expected to be called the “400Z” and is rumoured to feature the twin-turbo 3.0-litre V6 from the rather rough Infiniti Q60 Red Sport, a car which I found to come just short of being good though I didn’t mind the power. That car comes with 400 horsepower, suggesting the new Z name will reflect its power output.
That places it solidly ahead of the new Toyota Supra in the power department, and since it seems this car is far more likely to feature a manual transmission, Toyota’s little passion project is beginning to look less and less passionate. Maybe Nissan will pull this off.
It’s also pretty obvious that the design we see above already seems nearly production-ready, which would make sense as it’s included in Nissan’s plan to introduce 12 new or replacement models in the next year and a half. So the Z is coming very soon, should the world let it.