If this were a fully rounded review of the new 2023 Nissan Z, we would tell you about how great it is on the road, the generous views out the windows, and the body that evokes every generation of Z-car up to today.
But this is a track review, so we have to start off with a word we’re not …
Being BRZ fast as opposed to Supra fast is quite surprising. Now I want to see the 4 cylinder turbo Supra lapped as a comparing.
not just BRZ-fast, but automatic BRZ fast. Very surprising.
Weren't the acceleration numbers for the automatic dramatically better than the manual, like way more than what you would expect? Makes me wonder if there's some torque limiting going on during actual driving that doesn't show up on the dyno. I know the BRZ has a weight advantage and it's generally agreed that the supras are pretty underrated, but this still doesn't make sense to me.
Hopefully the soggy suspension can be easily fixed in the aftermarket, along with the nonlinear throttle...
Surprising results for sure.
Is the new BRZ/FRS that good? It'd be interesting to see a comparison with a 370Z and a 2.0L FRS/BRZ
In throttle house track test it was about 0.5s slower than the manual GR86. Though the dead steering and high weight would be a bigger issue for me. But we won't get any over here anyway, and only very few GR86s, sad times.
I really need to subscribe again to GRM, I wish they could sort out my problems with renewal :/
In reply to Cedricn :
Send me a message with your info and what problems you're encountering and I'll see what I can do.
Well, that's disappointing.. Nothing the aftermarket can't sort out, but really seems like the sort of thing an OEM would have taken care of before shipping it :(
I noticed one little typo, on the line about braking, "They help haul the car down into the corner while providing confidence-inspiring feedback, even if with ABS intervention. "
Do you have a lap time for a 1SS 1LE at The FIRM?
In reply to WonkoTheSane :
What about the typo where they call the BRZ a Supra BRZ?
I think this is pretty typical of NIssan in general. Their "sports" cars have tended more towards GT than sports since the 300ZX days. I have owned a couple iterations of the Z car and the latter ones have been relatively heavy and softly sprung which is nice for a boulevard cruiser but not so good for a track car or a canyon carver. It is encouraging to hear the brakes are good. I would think that the aftermarket will address the spring/shocks and throttle issue in short order and the car will shine.
Because it's basically $55k car on a 20-year old chassis, with a 10-year old engine, that turns out to be LESS than the sum of its parts.
In reply to Run_Away:
Yes, the new 2.4 seems to be very underrated from the factory.
The old 2.0 rate at 200 or 205, tended to dyno around 160-165whp. The new 2.4 rated at 228 seems to be dynoing 210-215whp. 40-45whp difference with a much larger midrange. In a car that's only about 60lbs heavier.
In reply to Toyspyder :
Thank you for catching those typos. We've corrected the story. We appreciate eagle-eyed readers such as yourselves.
The relative age of the parts involved isn't the issue. It sounds like it's suspension tuning, and DBW throttle tuning, that lets the rest of the package down. Reading the brief article, I found myself wondering if just a set of uprated sway bars would have been enough to fix that half of the equation. The throttle doesn't seem so easy to fix unless the aftermarket can hack the ECU to change how throttle commanded is dealt with by the ECU.
Correct me if I'm wrong of course.
z31maniac said:Because it's basically $55k car on a 20-year old chassis, with a 10-year old engine, that turns out to be LESS than the sum of its parts.
In reply to Run_Away:
Yes, the new 2.4 seems to be very underrated from the factory.
The old 2.0 rate at 200 or 205, tended to dyno around 160-165whp. The new 2.4 rated at 228 seems to be dynoing 210-215whp. 40-45whp difference with a much larger midrange. In a car that's only about 60lbs heavier.
Yes, the new 86/BRZ seem to be more like 240hp in reality.
It's been a minute since I drove a first gen BRZ but from what I remember it's basically a different car. Which is actually pretty impressive considering that the chassis is basically the same as the first gen car minus some suspension tuning tweaks, and the engine is basically just an increased displacement version of the original. Kind of the same strategy that nissan took, but much much better executed and resulted in a car greater than the sum of its parts, not less like the nissan.
I am curious how it fares against its predecessor. A neat looking far, for sure. Too bad.
So I will throw this in the mix. I've raced car with a progressive throttle pedal set up. I.E. the first half of the pedal travel didn't equate to 1/2 throttle etc. I've raced a couple of two stroke GP bikes set up like this as well.
It definitely takes some getting used to; it's almost like dealing with older turbo cars, some racers will find it to be a handy tool and others will loathe it.
With that said it seems to me Nissan went for a more street friendly set up then a race track friendly one. I wouldn't call that disappointing as most people driving them will never take them to the track.
The fact that the car responds well to trail braking would be enough for me personally to deal with the throttle pedal issue.
Sounds like its suspension tuning needs some work. I think slow corner transitions are probably more due to being overdamped than undersprung?
The article didn't mention what tires the car was on. That could be a huge delta in lap time vs. other cars that we're comparing it to.
pres589 (djronnebaum) said:The relative age of the parts involved isn't the issue. It sounds like it's suspension tuning, and DBW throttle tuning, that lets the rest of the package down. Reading the brief article, I found myself wondering if just a set of uprated sway bars would have been enough to fix that half of the equation. The throttle doesn't seem so easy to fix unless the aftermarket can hack the ECU to change how throttle commanded is dealt with by the ECU.
Correct me if I'm wrong of course.
Already beta tunes for it, since it's basically the Inifinit engine/ecu.
ShinnyGroove (Forum Supporter) said:The article didn't mention what tires the car was on. That could be a huge delta in lap time vs. other cars that we're comparing it to.
That wouldn't result in the acceleration deficit, though. It matched the BRZ pretty nicely just about everywhere, and they don't exactly come from the factory with gumballs from my understanding.
But why did Z Car Garage get 379 horsepower out of its dyno test? It could be the correction factor (SAE at BSI Racing versus standard at Z Car Garage) or the dyno itself. The results of our three back-to-back runs, though, were consistent.
Not using SAE correction is a red flag for sure. Dynos are good tools for development if used properly, they're not really well suited to taking a random car in random conditions and doing a random pull. The BSI group obviously made more of an effort here, doing multiple runs and using industry standards.
z31maniac said:pres589 (djronnebaum) said:The relative age of the parts involved isn't the issue. It sounds like it's suspension tuning, and DBW throttle tuning, that lets the rest of the package down. Reading the brief article, I found myself wondering if just a set of uprated sway bars would have been enough to fix that half of the equation. The throttle doesn't seem so easy to fix unless the aftermarket can hack the ECU to change how throttle commanded is dealt with by the ECU.
Correct me if I'm wrong of course.
Already beta tunes for it, since it's basically the Inifinit engine/ecu.
And even if you can't get into the ECU, you can modify the signal from the pedal before it gets there. There are a number of products on the market that do this for various cars in the name of "improving throttle response".
Disappointing in its market? I figured it wouldn't of been as fast as the gr86 at the track tbh. If I was to buy the new Z, I'd never track it. This is certainly more of a street oriented car to me just like the Supra.
Can't wait to see Z1 and Stillen make tunes and a suspension kit that transforms them. I'm still thrilled Nissan is giving this a go.
Keith Tanner said:ShinnyGroove (Forum Supporter) said:The article didn't mention what tires the car was on. That could be a huge delta in lap time vs. other cars that we're comparing it to.
That wouldn't result in the acceleration deficit, though. It matched the BRZ pretty nicely just about everywhere, and they don't exactly come from the factory with gumballs from my understanding.
But why did Z Car Garage get 379 horsepower out of its dyno test? It could be the correction factor (SAE at BSI Racing versus standard at Z Car Garage) or the dyno itself. The results of our three back-to-back runs, though, were consistent.
Not using SAE correction is a red flag for sure. Dynos are good tools for development if used properly, they're not really well suited to taking a random car in random conditions and doing a random pull. The BSI group obviously made more of an effort here, doing multiple runs and using industry standards.
The higher trim comes with much better Michelin P4's than the crappy Bridgestones in the Z.
Which trim 86 did they use? Same thing there, high trim is on PS4 (not -s though) and the base car is on some Michelin that still has a pretty low tread wear rating but doesn't work nearly as well.
The 86 (not sure if the same for the brz) throttle mapping is the opposite, regressive I guess. "Half throttle" seems to be about 80% of max available torque, then the second half of the pedal travel does almost nothing.
I wonder if that throttle is akin to the oblong "throttle cam" on my Porsche 924S, which makes the throttle kind of laggy up until like 80% of throttle and then becomes linear. On the Porsche with a cable throttle, it's to improve driveability (I replaced it with a round "cam" and now it's TOO responsive in stop-and-go and requires a lot of foot attention). So maybe that's the concept? Though seems dumb on a car with electronic throttle.
Also, there isn't a "sport" mode or whatever that improves throttle response for performance driving? Seems like that would be a sensible feature for a car like this, since you can get it in sporty econo-cars.
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In my experience, all Nissans are under-sprung from the factory. Seems Nissan has always been about softer springs and higher damper rates - at least in the last 20+ years.
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