The new Nissan Z car needs to be good – Thank Frankel it’s Friday

If I’d had a view of Japanese cars at the time it would have been that they were uniformly ghastly, a perhaps somewhat blinkered opinion nevertheless nourished by the once famed listings in the back of Car magazine known as ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’. Here are some verdicts from a 1977 issue: ‘Not as bad as some Japanese cars’ (Colt Lancer), ‘Deadly dull’ (Datsun 140J), ‘Rather you than us ‘(Datsun 200L), ‘Yawn’ (Mazda 929), ‘ZZZZZZZ’ (Toyota Carina), ‘A joke of some kind?’ (Toyota Crown). I could go on, but you get the picture.

I should have looked closer. I should have looked in the ‘Interesting Coupes and Sports Cars’ section, but I expect it never occurred to me that any Japanese car could reside there. The only Japanese coupe of which I gained first-hand experience in early life was my mate David’s Datsun 120Y and it may still be the worst car in which I’ve travelled. It wouldn’t start one day because, upon further inspection, it turned out the entire engine had fallen out of the bottom of the car. But there in the back of Car was a listing describing the Datsun 260Z as ‘hairy chested’. It’s not a term you’d use to describe a car today I expect, but it wasn’t actually an insult. In fact it sounded rather like a compliment. In the entire category it was the only Japanese entry.

But it would still be years before I paid any closer attention to them. By then I was driving cars for a living and was asked by some now long defunct classic car mag to go and drive an original Datsun 240Z. I knew by then that despite the prejudices with which I had grown up, this earliest of Z-cars was considered desirable and even collectible. They were good cars. But how good I failed to appreciate until I drove it. I thought it would go well because it had a 2.4-litre straight-six overhead camshaft engine, but I never suspected just how well.

In two regards it amazed me. First it was incredibly light: just over a tonne I believe, despite the iron block engine in its nose. And, despite the iron block in its nose again, it really handled. I drove hard for an afternoon in the Peak District and came away wondering why, if the Japanese could do that in 1970, they didn’t do it far more often.

Instead Nissan let the Z-car go to seed thereafter. I’ve not driven a 260Z but I think the consensus is that it’s a less involving car. Successive generations got more powerful but heavier and flabbier, soft and squidgy cruisers born for the straight lines of the American boulevard.

But then something happened. In 1990 Nissan released its second generation 300ZX. It looked incredibly sharp and came with a 300PS twin-turbo, quad-cam, V6 motor. This, you will recall, was a period in the industry’s history where far from the only reason to buy a Japanese car being that it was cheap, they were now making some of the best cars on earth. Consider what was launched around that time, everything from the Mazda MX-5 to the Honda NSX via the Lexus LS400, and you’ll see what I mean.

And the new 300ZX was cut very much from that cloth. For the first time since the 240Z, here was a Z-car that looked great and drove as well as it looked. And it’s really never looked back. I know the 350Z and 370Z that followed the 300ZX are not the world’s most sophisticated machines, but I just love the simplicity of the concept: a brawny fine sounding six cylinder engine up front driving the rear wheels alone through a manual gearbox. So long as the chassis is sorted, it doesn’t take much more than that to keep me happy.

Why all this now? Because soon Nissan will introduce its next Z-car, still a front engine, rear drive two seater, still with a manual gearbox and this time with 400PS. Last month it unveiled its ‘Z-Proto’ concept, which I believe is extremely close to the production car. Fifty years on, and despite some hiccoughs along the way, the Z-car looks as healthy as ever. Long may it stay that way.