Autoweek magazine arrived in the mail today with an article and picture of this seasons Nissan/Nismo factory racing 350Z they’ll enter in the Japanese GT-500 Championship. It’s running a twin-turbo 3.0 liter V6 turning out 465 HP @ 5600 rpm and 520 lb-ft @ 4000 rpm. I know there are other posts on this car that contain some pictures, but this is the first time I’ve had to take a close look.

The roofline of the racecar looks the same as the road car, but from the beltline down it’s all different. The racecar has a full-body aero package that includes a longer nose and tail, ported hood, huge racing skirts, huge rear wing, front-spoiler wings, refueling ports, and what look like 18” Bridgestone Potenza racing slicks all around. The funny thing is the doors are the same, including the elephant-ear door handles! It’s one nasty looking racecar, hopefully we’ll see this Z racing on Speed Channel soon.

When I look at this picture I see a racecar whose design has had many hours of fine-tuning in the wind tunnel. Nissan knew from the beginning they would be racing the Z, before it ever came to market. You can see the lines of the road car inside the racecar; chop off the ends of the racecar and tone down the fenders and hood and you’ve got the road car.

Nissan is serious about winning and they’ve gone to great lengths to build a winning racecar. So which Z came first, the road car or the racecar? Is the racecar a built-up version of the road car, or is the road car a scaled-down version of the racecar?

 

roadcar came first....i think

 

id bet that the roadcar came first because the racecar wont make them money and i doubt theyre inventing new technologies to test out in it. it would make sense that they make something that would sell to allow them to get into racing

 

Racecars DO make the company money...in the long term, and if it proves to be a winner. If the Z racer starts winng, you will have people out there saying, "Wow! I gotta get me a Z!" (or something to that effect)

 

Agreed. Look at the WRX people out there. If Colin McCrae (then, with Subaru - now with Ford) and others of the like didnt slam a WRX past the finish line for a few years in a row, there would most likely be less sales for that ugly... well, not the point of the thread

But yeah, racecars make everyday cars into household names. They make em recognizable. So they do, in turn, serve as advertisement for the company.

 

The Z roadcar obviously came first. But as with manufacturers such as BMW and mercedes and Porsche, Nissan has also implemented technology from their previous sports cars into the Z. If you were to watch the DVD from Nissan entitled The Run and you switched to the special features section of the DVD, i believe there is a segment called "Z Tech". In the section they mention a Nissan racecar from LeMans, from which some of the technology in the Z is derived. Im not sure of the exact name, but maybe ill look it up later. So in some ways, the race car came before the road car, but in others, the actual Z race car came after the road version. Hope this helps some.

Desi Z 07