Gadgetory

you know Nissan must be the most committed major Japanese maker when it comes to sports cars Toyota went off on their long humorless period only recently fixed you've got hon it's canceled their beautiful s2000 because it was too non sober Subaru they basically make Pendelton shirts on wheels until very recently but the whole time Nissan's been making the Z since 1969 let's drive this six generation sample the 2013 and 370z and check the tatters now the Z hasn't always been a car to celebrate there were the great early years then kind of the disco or Star Trek years later came the punchy years but now we're on to this 6th gen car that I think has the most spiritual relationship to the original Z quite a different vehicle in the numbers though 2.2 times more horsepower than the original car with just one point four times more weight yeah it's quite a bit faster spot the 2013 by the way by a revised face and LED running lights at the very least of the see you're going to have am/fm CD and aux jack pretty basic stuff if you don't try a little bit you can get one of these cars like it was made in 1995 luckily our car is loaded up we have the Touring package which along with the nav package brings you all the toys the navigation we've seen before I don't see anything very different here in terms of this Nissan interface it's old its tired but it's functional and at least the colors kind of match the colors of the instruments I guess that's a win now if you don't load this car up with at least a Touring package you don't get Bluetooth hands-free or bluetooth streaming that's kind of a shocker the Touring package also brings in Bose audio that's going to take you from four speakers to six speakers Bose processing and amps and two powered subs probably overkill for a car this size but you can't complain about the thump now navigation is separate on top of touring you've got to have a Touring level car to even option that once you do you get the nav traffic whether the rear-view camera even with the manual by the way but no around view camera which Nissan Infiniti like you just get a backup camera in a Z and that nav package brings you the bluetooth streaming iPod plus USB here in the console and DVD playback here in the slide all right folks now in the front of your Z you're gonna find the classic the bread-and-butter Nissan Motor one of their vq family v sixes they've been making a living on these since 1994 and for good reason it's a great v6 this one is a 3.7 liter no direct injection by the way and naturally aspirated kind of an old-school engine at this point but good numbers 332 horse 270 foot-pounds of torque gets this 3,300 pound sports car to 60 in about 5.2 it's not screwing around but deliver is kind of eat mpg for today's standards 1826 let's go for a ride now the first thing you notice driving the Z is it is not a dainty car all the inputs to clutch the transmission engagement the suspension response even the steering are kind of heavy mechanical nicely sort of weighted and it feels like you're really driving a machine as opposed to controlling a computerized thing 6-speed manual in this car which I like a lot great clutch and actuation on the gearbox again feels kind of old-school racecar C this S mode button down here if I engage that I get an S alongside the gear indicator and now I've got rev matching when I put the clutch in the computer automatically sets the engine RPMs to match perfectly with the flywheel so I can just dump the clutch and step on and I'm not going to have any weird hiccups it's kind of training wheels though if you really enjoy driving a car like this you know how to do that or something close to it so I think it's kind of a gimmick the automatic by the way is a 7-speed I'm sure it's a lovely automatic but it doesn't make sense in this car this is one of the last sort of really visceral sports cars out there even though it's not as light as I would like it to be so that brings up an interesting point when will Nissan really revise this powertrain go to a smaller displacement direct injection likely turbocharged engine to take some weight off the nose and to give me more shall we say violent response to the throttle there's plenty of power here but this car doesn't come at you in a way that is really outrageous and I think their market would like that another price of twenty thirteen Z coupe base is about thirty three nine delivered with almost nothing in it to go seen that style you first want to make sure you buy one in the Touring level trim that gets your Bose satellite radio Bluetooth hands-free and power leather seats on top of that you want to look at the navigation package nav bluetooth streaming DVD rear camera USB and iPod 2154 that automatic is 1,300 you're not going to do that so seen that style about forty thousand seven and you're on the road