Sushi chefs know that when preparing blowfish, orfugu, there’s a fine line between paralyzing your patron and giving them the desired tingly sensation that comes from ingesting a tiny bit of the fish’s deadly poison. Making a great car better needs a similar level of finesse. Nissan’s performance division, NISMO, has attempted to do just that with the 370Z. The question is, have they given the Z-car extra pizzazz or gone too far?
Flashier Duds, Reflashed Engine
The car clearly looks different, being 7.2 inches longer than the base Z. About six of those seven inches reside in a new nose, while the remaining inch and change is in the redesigned rear bumper that comes complete with diffuser. Put the NISMO side-by-side with a standard Z and the Adrian Brody schnoz certainly stands out. The redesigned rocker panels make the Z look as though it might be wider, but that’s just a visual trick; it’s the same width. Shorter springs lower the NISMO by 0.1 inch. A larger wing that does a thorough job of blocking rearward visibility resides on the rear hatch. The wing might look import tuner-y, but Nissan claims all of the body modifications create no additional drag and generate 18 pounds of downforce over the front axle and 35 pounds over the rear at 75 mph.
Underhood, there’s a similar VQ37VHR V-6 that powers the regular Z, but an ECU reflash and a specially tuned, larger-diameter dual exhaust increases the power to 350 at 7400 rpm. That’s 18 more horses than the standard Z, delivered 400 revs higher. Torque is up by 6 lb-ft to 276.
Unfortunately our test car wasn’t properly broken in when we had the opportunity to run the numbers on it. The performance was good—0-to-60-mph in 5.2 seconds and 13.7 seconds through the quarter-mile at 105 mph—but worse than we have seen in the new 370Z. Those figures certainly didn’t reflect an 18-hp gain. It has been our experience that the VQ-series engines perform better as they age (insert your own cougar joke here) and we feel that the NISMO, after a lengthy break-in period, will match or better 0–60 in 4.8 seconds and 13.4 seconds for the quarter, our best times so far for a 370Z.
Keep Reading: 2009 Nissan NISMO 370Z - Short Take Road Test
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