The newly-announced Nissan Nismo Z comes with all the performance bumps you would expect from a track-focused variant of a sports car, but that push toward lap times brings an unexpected compromise. While the standard Z is offered with a standard manual transmission, the Nismo Z only comes with a variant of the optional 9-speed automatic.
Nissan's director of advanced product planning, Paul Hawson, told Road & Track that the choice was the result of customer feedback during the process of developing the Z's Nismo model.
"With Nissan, any product we're conceptualizing always starts with the customer," Hawson said. "Our process is that way. So the customers we talked to, when it comes to the Nismo, they were track-oriented people. These are people that are concerned about lap times, they're not concerned about the nostalgia for Z. We have something for that. It's the Z. This one, in particular, is lap time and performance, and it is faster. If you benchmark it, look at other manufacturers that are making sports cars, a lot of them are two-pedal now. Even the upper grade, performance versions are two-pedal because it is faster."
That does not mean a manual Nismo Z will never happen, just that the car will not launch with a manual option. Haweson kept the door open, noting that the same market conditions which led to the car being developed with an automatic could also lead to a three-pedal Nismo Z down the line:
"Because we're so customer-oriented, if there's a groundswell of 'I've got to have this in manual,' we can do it. It's just, again, for the purity of the concept, it was about lap times."
While the Nismo Z does not get the six-speed, it does come with some added transmission benefits over a base Z with the optional automatic. This version of the nine-speed gets faster (as much as 50 percenter quicker on downshifts) and a track-oriented Sport+ automated setting. Those tweaks help that bottom line of lap times, representing a major difference in goals between the basic Z and its Nismo counterpart:
"For the Z, it's a dance partner. The input, the communication, the feedback, the conversation between the driver and car was top of mind. That's why the manual was so important," Hawson said. "This is not a dance partner; this is on the track to get better lap times. That's why it's not needed. It's been tested on the track and it's just faster. For this concept, for this car, for lap times, it's automatic. But if there's a demand, we're going to look at making it [with a manual]."
