Looks like Edmund's got a bit of wheel and stopwatch time with the new 370Z. Granted a bit of apples and oranges in regards to the Stang, but I imagine there's some level of cross shopping and it's good to see what others guys are doing, performance and engineering-wise, on general principals.

http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/Drives/FullTests/articleId=136547?tid=edmunds.il.home.photopanel..1 .*

Seems to be a nice, if unsurprising, level of performance improvement. The suspension sounds very good -- a rolling example of what a sophisticated (IRS) chassis can do for ride AND handling.

The SynchroReb Match thing sounds trick too, though I'll stay away from arguments as to whether it takes away too much interactions in an ABS-like manner.

Motor seems strong though I think 3.7 hi-performance liters might be about .5 liter too many as a V6s inherent vibrations seem to take the joy out of redlining the thing. I'm a little surprised it's not even stronger as my M3's 3.2L I6 makes about the same power but is pure aural bliss at 8K revs -- maybe Nissan should bring back the straight six to the Z car.

 

The VQ is arguably one of the greatest 6 cylinders ever made. It's been on Ward's 10 best engines list since 1995, enough said

 

Car & Driver got 4.7 0-60 and 13.3 in 1/4 mile, .99g skidpad, and 106ft 60-0 braking...

Gotta give props to Nissan for not only adding HP, but significantly cutting weight (they cut 200lbs from the 350 before adding more structural integrity and a bigger engine). I desperately wish Ford would take a similar approach with the Mustang.

 

Very good #'s. But I'm not a big fan of the new styling.

 

Eh, they only dropped about 80 lbs total though. You would also think by changing from the 3.5 to the 3.7 that you would also get a nice bump in torque, but no, both engines make about the same amount of torque. Kind of disappointing if you ask me, talk about people that should be upset with a redesign, they did get their new engine and it isn't that much better than the outgoing one. They gained about 25 hp and no torque and that is the engine they will have until the next redesign. I mean the tweaked 2010 Mustang gained 15 hp and 5 ft-lb of torque. Sorry, I can't give any props to Nissan.

 

I would think that the torque curve is flatter. Like I said earlier, there isn't much that Nissan could have done to improve the VQ. It's a great engine and has been for a while. Ford would be lucky to have an engine equal to the VQ in their lineup. The upcoming Ecoboost engine will put Ford close.

 

good numbers, but the car is still ugly as hell

 

Or we could of had a 450Z with a VK in it.

 

I'm impressed with the new 370Z, definitely looks better, more upscale interior, much improved performance.. I'm really interested in a drag race with a Mustang, see who'd come out on top... 0-60: 4.7s looks promising.. though the '10 Mustang looks way hotter.. hahaha

 

I've always thought one of the Asian imports ought to take that simple, time honored and usually very effective trick of stuffing a big V8 into a smaller, lithe chassis. Nissan, Toyota and even Hyundai have very nice, powerful V8s just sitting on their part shelves and Nissan and Hyundai both have nice RWD sport coupes to provide loving homes -- now if Toyota would finally quit dithering and make a Supra coupe out of their Lexus AS-F chassis...

But for some reason I have not been able to fathom, they just seem real gun shy about doing this, even though a reasonably affordable 450Z, Supra 5.0 or Genesis 460 could really rock the performance car world. They've done some higher end, very high performance cars -- the NSX, GT-R and aforementioned IS-F come to mind, but simper away from the big motor into smallish car = helluva bang for the buck factor.

Hopefully, one of them will grow a spine do it, set the performance world on fire and the others will follow. Of course, this scenario would only increase the competition against the Detroit pony cars by an order of magnitude.

 

I just think that for Toyota especially putting their V8 into something like that would end up in the Lexus showroom and would be $70,000+ which would put it out of most peoples reach. Their last Supra effort was supra expensive at the time. I recall $32-$35k back then when Mustangs were a full $10k+ less money. And that was when the dollar was actually a dollar. The business case for them to do this must be difficult because I think they would've done it by now if they could justify it.

 

I just looked it up, in 1994 when the last supra came out base price was $36900 turbo model $44,100 compared to the Mustang at $13,700 or GT for $17,500.

So yeah Supra was way too expensive.

 

There ya go, so much worse than I thought, almost 20K more. I doubt we'll see a supra again anytime soon that will appeal to anyone besides the most affluent.

 

you won't find an import V8 for under 30K; doesn't happen