Review: Nissan 370Z

In the 60s, Japanese car companies made boxy little motors with funny names that had cigar-chomping bosses of British car firms laughing their bowler hats off.

Who'd want to buy a reliable, efficient 1969 Japanese saloon over a Morris Minor that was designed in 1949?

Then, in 1970, Datsun unleashed a car called the 240Z - a proper sports car.
It looked so good that, decades later, old ones were used as the basis for Ferrari 250 GTO replicas.

But still the old fools laughed... until the 240Z became a worldwide hit and outsold cars like the MGB.

The 240Z turned into the 260Z, which was a 2+2, gained a bit of weight in the 80s and became the 300Z.

In the 90s, Nissan (the Datsun name was long gone) added a lot of horsepower and a couple of turbochargers and it became the 300ZX Turbo.

Then Nissan stopped making it and the world was Z-less until 2003, when it launched the 350Z.

Now you know the history of Nissan's sports car and I've proved I'm a proper car anorak and proud of it.

History might be repeating itself because here we have the 370Z
(though like the 350 it's only a two-seater).

What the £26,690 370Z gives you is a very broad grin. I would say the grin that developed while larking around in the Nissan was perhaps a few millimetres wider than the one measured in last week's £99k Audi R8 V10.

The Z's a bit like an oriental Ford Mustang. It's a little crude, blunt instrument - and extremely easy to enjoy.

You'd expect transforming the 350Z into the 370Z would mean drilling larger holes in the engine and bumping it up to 3700cc.

But Nissan has also made it shorter by 65mm and its wheelbase is 100mm less.

It should make the 370Z more agile but I'd be surprised if you noticed it on the road. You will notice the performance.

The extra 200cc has lifted power from 309bhp to 326bhp. It'll do 0-62mph in 5sec and has a top speed of 155mph.

By modern standards that's not amazingly fast but it's still swift for a car under £30k.

The V6 starts with the press of a button and ticks over with a nice burble.

The engine, though it likes to rev to 7,000rpm to produce full power, is a bit lazy. Prod the throttle and it slowly revs as the sound gets fruity.

You can buy an automatic Z but the standard six-speed manual is right and proper for this car.

It also comes with a new bit of tech: it can do the heel and toeing for you.

If you think that's something to do with ballroom dancing, I'll explain... If, when on a track, you come to a sharp corner after a long straight and change from sixth to first,
the engine screams and the rear is unbalanced as you turn in, which might put you
into a spin.

To avoid this, racing drivers blip the throttle with their heel and press the brake at the same time. This smooths the gear change and doesn't unbalance the car (best practised off the public road - if you get it wrong you might go through a shop window.) Press a button and the 370Z blips the throttle for you.

All semi-automatic gearboxes do it but the 370Z is the first with a traditional box to do it.

Just like the 350Z and the old 240Z, the 370Z is a simple sports car that gives almost all the thrills of cars costing four times as much.

It's an old-fashioned hairy-chested sports car for people who don't necessarily have hair on their chests.

Like my wife Mindy, who has a soft spot for it.

THE FACTS
Nissan 370Z
Price: £26,690
Engine: 3696cc, V6, 326bhp
0-62mph: 5.0sec
Fuel consumption: 26.9mpg

Indian car exports hobble in South Asia

Political instability, slow economic growth and flooding of used cars have hit the business of Indian carmakers in South Asia. As a result, growth in exports to Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Bhutan is “much lower than actual potential”, say industry representatives.

Mahindra & Mahindra, for instance, sells around 3,000 vehicles annually in these markets, but now believes that the recent global financial crisis has put a dampener on sales, especially in Sri Lanka.

“The challenge in these countries has largely to do with politics and economics. While political instability has impacted business, in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, the policy of allowing used cars is a hindrance to new vehicle sales from India. A higher tariff structure, especially for passenger vehicles, is another bottleneck,” Mr P.N. Shah, Executive Vice-President, International Operations, M&M, told Business Line.

Potential

Not everyone is complaining though. Fiat India Automobile sees an opportunity in markets such as Bangladesh, which is dominated by used-car imports from Japan and Singapore.

“Due to the high appreciation of the yen and the dollar, these imports have become very expensive. Cars from India are cheaper due to the rupee trade with Nepal and Bhutan. The exchange rate (with the rupee) does not fluctuate and this is an advantage,” said Mr Rajeev Kapoor, Chief Executive Officer.

Fiat plans to export cars to Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bhutan. One major city in each country contributes up to 70-80 per cent of the business, be it Kathmandu, Colombo or Thimpu (Bhutan).

Market players

Indian carmakers are major players in these markets, which are characterised by marginal volumes, sometimes even smaller than a metro in India. Tata Motors is the market leader in commercial vehicles in Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Sri Lanka (where it has been exporting since 1962). It recently appointed a distributor in the left-hand drive market of Afghanistan.

“Now that the civil war in Sri Lanka is over, the country holds some promise. The same is the case with Bangladesh and Nepal where things are looking up,” said Mr Jnaneswar Sen, Vice-President, Marketing, Honda Siel Cars India. The company sold 68 cars in the South-Asian neighbourhood last year but saw volumes crash this year. Sales, this far, are only two cars.

A Bold Claim: Chevy Volt Gets 230 MPG

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice….well, you know the rest. When Raser Technologies claimed their re-jiggered Electric Hummer got 100 miles per gallon, I thought they fudged a few numbers. But for GM to claim 230 MPG for the Volt…well, that’s taking a trip to fantasyland, with magical goblins and unicorns.

Like Raser, GM came up with their mammoth figure by using averages, statistics, and marketing chicanery. Obviously, no internal combustion engine could possibly achieve 230 MPG—not in this century, anyway. But as everyone knows, the Chevy Volt is of the electric variety,
an “extended range electric vehicle” to be exact. This means that, for the first 40 miles, the Volt runs on pure electric. After that, an ICE engine kicks in to “extend” the Volt’s range to more than 300 miles.

According to GM CEO Fritz Henderson, “many Chevy Volt drivers may be able to be in pure electric mode on a daily basis without having to use any gas.” GM defers to the U.S. Department of Transportation which claims that “nearly eight of 10 Americans commute fewer than 40 miles a day.” GM transmogrifies this trend into their ridiculous 230 MPG figure. Yet, by this logic, one could claim that the Volt gets a million MPG. The vehicle itself doesn’t get 230 MPG, or even half that.

Vehicle sales inch slowly back into the faster lane

The new passenger vehicle market in New Zealand is showing signs of climbing out of the worst recession in decades - but it is not likely any time soon to return to the historical highs of the past, like the 103,00 sales in 2007 and 97,000 last year.

"An annualised rate of 75,000 to 80,00 units over upcoming years is a prudent level to base a business plan on," says Mazda NZ managing director Andrew Clearwater.

He expects sales this year of new cars and commercials to total around 69,000 units and says the days of car plants turning out vehicle after vehicle and distributors loading dealers with demonstrator models are over.

Companies are resizing their businesses to meet the needs of a more conservative economy, he says.

"Our projections are realistic, particularly if you look at the number of new vehicle registrations in the past which seemed to end up on used-car lots, giving an unrealistic impression of strong new-car demand," he said. "In the future, there will be a more market-driven approach to vehicle production, against what I call a factory-driven approach."

Such an environment, he says, will in theory allow more buyers to order a car tailored to their tastes. "There would be delays because New Zealand is far away from assembly plants. But there are costs to be saved everywhere - you pull them out of the factory as well."

Clearwater says that although the market seems to have bottomed out, the industry cannot expect the Government to introduce a scrappage scheme to kick-start sales and get older, less fuel-efficient vehicles off the road.

"Government trialled such a scheme in Christchurch and Wellington. But with a subsidy of a handful of bus tickets as an incentive to take part, it pales in comparison with the support [from governments] in other markets to get clunkers off the road."

Many European Union countries have a scrappage scheme in place.

The United States has already spent US$1 billion ($1.5 billion) on its cash-for-clunkers programme and President Barack Obama has asked Congress for a further US$2 billion.

Sales of new cars and commercials last month were up 3.8 per cent over June. New Zealand Transport Authority figures show 4473 new passenger vehicles were registered in July, compared with 4306 units in June.

"This shows a modest, continuing trend of increasing new passenger vehicle sales from a major low in April this year," says Motor Industry Association chief executive Perry Kerr.

But sales of commercial vehicles slumped 30 per cent in July compared with June.

"However, one positive aspect of the new commercial vehicle market is that the July registration total of 1267 units is the third best month this year, so that is relatively encouraging in the longer term that vehicle sales are tracking upwards," says Kerr.

July's commercial vehicle numbers included the first sales from Chinese carmaker Great Wall Motors. GWM sold 35 duel-cab utes to rank eighth among commercial distributors.

Toyota, Ford and Holden are the top three marques in both the new car and commercial vehicle sectors. Year to date, Toyota's overall market share of 19.3 per cent compares with Ford on 12.4 per cent and Holden on 9.2 per cent.

The Toyota Corolla continues as the country's best-selling model in 2009 with sales of 2066 units, ahead of the Holden Commodore with 1544 units and the Suzuki Swift with 1419.

Cash for Clunkers Benefitting SUV Sales Most

The government says that the best-selling vehicles under its new Cash for Clunkers trade-in program have been small cars like the Ford Focusand Toyota Corolla. A new report, however, disagrees. The source of the conflict lies in the way the government counts vehicle sales.

CNN Money explains, "The discrepancy is a result of the methods used." Analysts from Edmunds.com use "traditional sales measurements, tallying sales by make and model. The government uses a more arcane measurement method that subdivides models according to engine and transmission types, counting them as separate models." The government, for instance, counts sales of four-cylinder Toyota Camrys and six-cylinder Toyota Camrys as if the two cars were two different models, while Edmunds.com counts them as one.

Counting by the government's method, Autoblog notes, the Ford Focus has been the top-selling vehicle under the program. By Edmunds' count, however, the Ford Escape wins. But, by the government's method, "the Environmental Protection Agency counts the crossover as six separate models; including FWD, AWD and Hybrid versions."

In fact, Jalopnik reports, "if you look at it by model, and not by trim, trucks and crossovers are the true winners." The Edmunds list includes a pair of full-size trucks and a pair of small SUVs, although the government's winner, the Ford Focus, comes in second even by Edmunds' standard.

Edmunds.com's list of the top Cash for Clunkers buys:

1. Ford Escape

2. Ford Focus

3. Jeep Patriot

4. Dodge Caliber

5. Ford F-150

6. Honda Civic

7. Chevrolet Silverado

8. Chevrolet Cobalt

9. Toyota Corolla

10.Ford Fusion

If you're interested in the Cash for Clunkers program, check out our Cash for Clunkers page. If you're ready to buy, contact local dealers. For the latest news on the program,