Collector’s field notes · Nissan Z (RZ34)
The new Z looked backwards
without using one old car as a stencil.
The current Z seems to have been designed by someone looking in two directions at once. Nissan says the headlamps recall a Japan-market 240ZG, while the tail lamps remember the much later Z32 300ZX. I started at those opposite ends of the little Mini GT and found a car interested in its family without pretending the whole family happened in one decade.
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The front and rear do not cite the same ancestor.
Nissan’s original design account points to the 1970s 240ZG for the two half-circle elements in the new Z’s LED headlamps. From the side, the long bonnet and roof falling towards a squared-off tail recall the first Z. Walk around the back and the horizontal lamp treatment comes from the Z32 300ZX of the 1990s. One body is carrying several remembered shapes.
That is more satisfying than a blanket claim that the car is retro. The references have addresses. A headlight can suggest one generation, the roof another, and the rear panel a third. None requires the new car to copy the old car’s dimensions. The white Mini GT makes the dark roofline especially clear; on the blue release the colour change alters which parts catch the eye first.
The name makes a related joke. In the United States Nissan dropped the numeric prefix and called the 2023 model simply Z, though its 3.0-litre twin-turbo V6 was rated at 400 US horsepower. No “300Z” badge had to do the measuring for it.
The three gauges survived the digital dashboard.
The mixture continues where a miniature cannot easily show it. Nissan kept three physical gauges above the centre of the dashboard: boost, turbocharger speed and voltage. The main driver display is a 12.3-inch configurable digital screen. The old Z’s three-gauge idea and a modern instrument panel occupy the same cabin, instead of one replacing the other entirely.
