Nissan 370Z makes thrilling leap from fantasy to reality

WHAT if there were a button on your video games console which, if pressed, turned the virtual racing car on your screen into an actual, touchy-feely car parked outside your house? At a stroke, Britain’s driveways would be awash with exotica as teenage boys replaced dad’s dull-as-ditchwater family saloon with something much sexier.

Of course, Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Bugattis would take centre stage, as children across the land went mad with the magic button, turning a blind eye to the fact that dad still has to tax, insure and put fuel in his new toy. At, or near, the top of every thinking kids’ wish list, though, would be the much more modest but every bit as exciting Nissan 370Z.

Really switched-on kids would ask for the one shown here, the GT Edition, a state-of-the art, two-seat sports coupe that’s been beamed straight out of your PlayStation to put a grin on the face of every person who goes anywhere near it.

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If it looks like a bit of a throwback to the hairy-chested 1970s, that’s because it is, proudly tracing its DNA back to the great Datsun Z cars that took Britain by storm 40 years ago. Underneath, though, it’s all 21st century. The question is: does it do the Z family name proud? You betcha.

Nissan dealer Alex F Noble at Straiton near Edinburgh invited Scotsman Motors to test their 370Z demonstrator over a long weekend and…well… how could we resist? From the outside, the 370Z looks a lot like the massive-selling 350Z which it replaced at the start of 2009. However, there are subtle differences. In keeping with current trends, it’s smaller, sort of. Nissan’s take on downsizing goes something like this: make the car a bit shorter, but wider, shave a bit of weight off it, then stick a bigger engine in it. That’s fine by us, especially when you consider that the bigger engine is more powerful, yet more economical and greener than the unit it replaces.

To that pretty exterior, the GT Edition pack adds 19-inch Rays forged alloys that look like they’ve come straight off its barnstorming big brother, the GT-R. Other visual highlights include GT decals and a choice of metallic or pearlescent paint finishes (one white and two black). Inside, it gets a premium sound system and a reversing camera.

The cockpit has room for two, but it’s all about the driver. Like the GT-R, the instrument binnacle slides up and down as the steering wheel is adjusted, so the important dials are always visible. It’s a simple but brilliant idea, which makes you wonder why everyone else isn’t doing it too. A row of dials across the top of the dash (voltmeter, clock, oil temperature gauge) are angled towards the driver.

Stab the stop/start button and the 3.7-litre V6 whirrs into life. As with the GT-R, there’s no blood-curdling howl, more of a distant mechanical hum which stays with you at low speeds, right up to the point where the road ahead clears and you can resist the temptation to floor the throttle no longer.

At that precise instant, the fat rear tyres squirm a bit, a roar fills the empty space behind the seats and the 370Z leaps down the road with astonishing urgency. Big brakes harness the speed, and a synchro rev control button linked to the six-speed gearbox blips the throttle on the driver’s behalf, guaranteeing swift, perfectly-executed gearshifts, even if your brain has turned to blancmange in all the excitement.

For 2011, boffins at Nissan’s European Technical Centre in Bedfordshire fiddled with the 370Z’s suspension to make the car less fidgety on Britain’s pock-marked roads. Their tinkering seems to have paid off, and the car is supple over the bumps, but turns sharply into bends thanks, in no small part, to the huge amount of grip from its tyres (245s at the front, 275s at the back). And even on damp roads, the 370Z’s tail clings on with a lot more tenacity than you’d expect from a rear-wheel drive coupe.

Our test route took us from Edinburgh across the Forth Road Bridge to Fife, where we put the 370Z through its paces on a mix of open A-roads and twisty Bs. The Z took everything we threw at it in its stride, so we rounded our run off with a detour to Culross, just to see if a) it could squeeze its pert behind down the narrow 16th Century lanes and b) anything would fall off as it squared up to cobbles the size of bowling balls. It fitted, and nothing shook loose.

At a bargain-licious £35,000, few cars put video game fantasy in reach of the real world quite as well as the Nissan 370Z GT Edition. Highly recommended.

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