Nissan bares its soul with new Z sports car

TOKYO, July 30 Edwina Gibbs writing for Reuters. "In its own words, Nissan Motor Co bared its soul on Tuesday, embodied in a new Z sports car -- the vehicle that first made the company's name in the United States and one it now hopes will symbolise the rebirth of its brand.

First launched in 1969, the Z went on to become the world's best-selling sports car -- a history that Nissan, which has completed two years of drastic restructuring, wants to draw on as it sets out on a fresh path of product-led growth.

"To many, the Z expresses the soul of Nissan," Chief Executive Carlos Ghosn told a news conference packed with over 1,000 media representatives and Z car enthusiasts.

"Nissan is back and its soul is invigorated.

Nissan says the car, now in its fifth generation, has broken away from the current trend for classic sports car designs like Ford Motor Co's Thunderbird, although the new 350Z echoes the original 240Z with its tight lines and hatchback design.

Production of the sports car only ended two years ago but Nissan executives acknowledge that the Z car had lost its way, with sales only a trickle of what they had once been.

"It became fat, slower and more expensive and the volumes came dramatically down. There was too much enrichment of the product and this killed the car, in fact," said Patrick Pelata, head of Nissan's design department.

The 240Z, sold under the company's earlier brand name Datsun, cost only $3,600 in 1969, half that of rival sports cars, which was a big factor behind its high sales and all the Z car enthusiast clubs that sprouted up across the United States.

At the peak in 1979, annual U.S. sales topped 100,000 units.

MY FAIR LADY

The current Z -- or Fairlady Z as it is called in Japan because a former president of Nissan, Katsuji Kawamata, was enamoured of the musical "My Fair Lady" -- will be priced from around $26,000 with upper grade models at around $34,000.

That compares with around $52,000 for a Porsche Boxster S -- a sports car Pelata says the Z resembles in terms of performance.

The Z is expected to hit the U.S. market at the end of August and the car has received glowing reviews from the American auto press, appearing to fill a niche in the U.S. sports car market between the Mazda Miata and the Chevrolet Corvette.

In its first year of sales Nissan expects to sell 42,000 of the 3.5 litre V-6 engine Z that comes with either a six-speed manual transmission or a five-speed automatic gearbox.

Over the four to five year life-span of the model, the car is expected to sell an average 33,000 units a year.

Ghosn declined to give a sales breakdown by region, saying only that most would go to the U.S. and that sales in the first year would only be hampered by production capacity restraints.

Industry observers say, however, that the sales breakdown was probably not given to disguise the fact that the sports car does not command the same kind of popularity in Japan that it has in the United States.

The company said it currently had an order backlog of 9,500 units, which accounts for around four months of production.