New Nissan 400Z Spotted With Production-Ready Changes

We know that Nissan has always wanted to keep the 400Z as close as possible to the prototype the company unveiled last year, and with a few patent images being released a few weeks ago, we had a lot of trust in this.

Now, the 400Z has actually been photographed and filmed, and we’re happy to report that the car is looking almost identical to the gorgeous yellow and black prototype that Nissan unveiled as their next Z sports car.

There are a few slight differences, though. So let’s outline them in this article and you can let us know if it’s still a winner in your books.

The rear haunches now feature a reflector, a necessary evil on today’s roads. Move slightly further forward and you’ll see a more visible door handle, similar to that of the 350Z and 370Z, although unlike those, these are painted the same colour as the body.

At the rear, the Fairlady Z badge has been replaced by a small spoiler, and the diffuser is now a gloss black over the concept’s carbon fibre weave. It wouldn’t surprise me if a number of different variants are released with different options revolving around that rear spoiler, plus a NISMO pack that would add back the carbon bits that we’re missing here.

Inside you can see that the manual gearbox has gone, but Nissan has promised us that a six-speed manual will be available for this car. Again, an auto is just a necessary evil in this day and age, despite the driver still having the ability to manually change gear via flappy paddles behind the steering wheel.

Reports are showing the engine will be the VR30DDTT currently used by the Infiniti Q60, which in this guise produces 400 horsepower. Project Cars 3 however, which has added the 400Z to its available cars to drive, has horsepower listed as 439 horsepower. While this hasn’t been confirmed to be the official figure, we can only cross our fingers.

Unfortunately, the 400Z will not be coming to the UK. So it looks as though I’m going to have to uproot to the US to take it for a drive when it is officially released.