Back in the 1970s, the coolest Fairlady Z you could buy was something called the Z432R. Taking a page out of Oldsmobile’s handbook, 432 referred to the four valves per cylinder, three Mikuni carburetors, and two overhead camshafts on the S20 engine, more commonly found in the Skyline GT-R. As for the R, that signified that this Z was a homologation special, designed for the world of rallying. With orange paint and lighter weight, it was as close to a Fairlady Z race car as you could buy from a Nissan showroom.
Flash forward to 2022 and Nissan has announced an actual Z race car that customers can buy. Say hello to the Nissan Z GT4, the latest sports car racing contender from Japan. Unlike the Fairlady Z432R, the Z GT4 won’t be road legal, but that doesn’t matter considering how serious this effort is.
To craft the Z GT4, Nissan’s Nismo division took a standard Z and removed everything that was unnecessary. The stock wheels, the quarter windows, the interior, the lot. Once everything extraneous was stripped away, Nismo went to town. The stock dual exhaust makes way for a single-exit cannon, the interior features a proper roll cage and a bucket seat with a halo. The suspension’s been reworked, the VR30DDTT twin-turbocharged three-liter V6 has been retuned, and a whole host of aerodynamic tweaks have been applied.
At the front, the standard car’s divisive grille has been ditched in favor of purposeful mesh to ram more air through the heat exchangers. A big splitter makes its presence known on the front valence and wraps into front wheel arch extensions, while enormous canards direct even more air. The hood now features aerodynamic external catches and two purposeful vents that should help evacuate a lot of hot engine bay air. At the back, a large rear wing with a transparent Gurney flap helps glue the Z GT4 to the track, while the requisite towing point and rain light are set nicely into the rear bumper.
From there, the Z GT4 was actually fine-tuned in the heat of battle. Two test vehicles entered the 2022 Fuji Super TEC 24 Hours Race, with car number 244 finishing in the overall top ten after a virtually trouble-free 707 laps of the legendary circuit. From there, Z GT4 development continued in multiple Super Taiku events, meaning this GT4 car has racing chops before it’s even gone on sale.
Expect full specifications and pricing for the Nissan Z GT4 to be announced at the SEMA show in Las Vegas sometime between Nov. 1 and Nov. 4. Customer deliveries are said to start in the first half of 2023, which means it won’t be long until the Nissan Z GT4 is dicing it up with Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 Clubsports and Toyota GR Supra GT4s.
[Ed note: All I want to do is get one of these, paint it Sharp Racing red-white-and-blue, and toss good ol’ #33 on it and go racing in IMSA!]
All photos courtesy of Nissan
The degree of body slope coming up behind the rear wheels is sharper, a more modern 45 degree angle.
I love how similar they managed to keep tail though.
*the
Can I get one in 240Z #15 metallic blue with the side view mirrors on the front fenders ?
They sure have changed through the decades but I dare you to find another car that has stuck so closely to its original design language throughout it’s modernization than the Z.
I’ll bet a time traveling aficionado from 1969 could take one look at this beauty 53 years later and see that it’s a still a Z.
I mean the 911 is still pretty recognizable. So is the Mustang.
Aesthetically, I like the sleepy smug headlights, but with the gaping maw of a grill, it gives off the vibe of being stoned on an exotic intoxicant—extract from the pineal gland of a male adolescent iguana, maybe?
The whole front fascia is a nice looking design wink at the original 240Z with headlight covers.
It had the gaping maw grill just like that.
This is such a great design. It pays a subtle homage to the OG yet gained a little muscle.
It’s even retained that cute/mean hood to bumper overbite.
I love this design!
It still feels like a body kit on top of a 370Z to me. You’ve got some old school details but we lost the classic proportions with the 2nd gen 300ZX and they ain’t coming back.
Can we have an EV of this with a comically large power plug that clicks into the grille? I would buy it immediately, no further questions.
“You’ll actually be able to buy” = one or two will be arriving on dealer lots in early 2025 with a dealer-added $50,000 markup.
Car dealerships are cancer and they are what is killing car culture. Not safety or environmental regs. Dealers add $50k in markups to the most desirable models = car makers complain and cut the models because “no one’s buying.” Of course fucking no one is buying. It’ll be a cold day in hell when I let a dealer steal $50k from me while adding nothing of value.
> get one unit of new enthusiast model
> add five-figure Market Adjustment™
> refuse to let anyone test drive the thing
“These sales numbers are awful. We can’t make these, there’s no market.”
So I’ll never be able to drive this beauty legally.
Still fun to gawk at. It’s so pretty.
you get a GT4, you get a GT4, and you get a GT4, we all get a GT4 !!!!