Well said... and the Z back then was a luxury-pig, more of a grand tourer, a far cry from a pure sports car.

 

A grand tourer that crushed Corvettes,beat 911 turbos and nipped on the heels of 348 Ferrari's.

 

Back then Corvettes had 250hp/ 350 ft lbs of torque and redlined at 5500 rpm!

 

Hey that was a great time period, no Z ever was a world class fighter, the 3rd gen Z put the world on its ***. And made the likes of Gm, Porsche and Ferrari to go back to the drawing board.

 

balance and feel is HUGE in a sports car. if all you care about is racing in a straight line, then get a big V8. if you want to have FUN, you need a fun car. in many ways, a miata would be far more FUN than a mustang GT or some dodge/chrystler SRT8 car..... i've driven a few of those, big fast and crappy.

anyway... the RX8 is one of the most fun cars I"ve driven. the S2k is very fun, and the other car I drove that was a total blast was a Boxster. probably a lot like the cayman the other poster described... not the fastest thing in th world, but the balance, the fun, the handling, and the wail of the Porsche motor at WOT is intoxicating. what a fun car. literally glued to the road through the twisties.

on pure fun factor, i'd say the boxster beats out the RX8. practicality, the RX* has the rear seats...

but in terms of finding a fun car - power isn't everything.

so who cars if the new car has less poewr than the competition. like another person correctly pointed out, Mazda has really NEVER had the "fastest" car in it's class..with the exception of the recent MS3. if you look at what that car competes against... and assume it's NOT the EVO/STi...but the GTi, Civic, and other similarly priced econocars... the MS3 is KING of that class.

but the previous RX7s - from 1979 to 1995 - was always a step behind the competition in raw power. when i was a teenager looking for my first car i was down to RX7s and 280Zs....i test drove a bunch of 280Z cars.. all were faster than the rX7s i drove, but the Zs felt cheap and crappy and all felt like they had been flogged/thrashed by the owners. like cheap vettes that were trashed. the RX7s all seemed nicer inside and were more compact, more fun to drive..i ended up with a 79 RX7. what a fun car. especialy after a RB exhaust, bigger carbs, ported motor...

back then - mazda focused on balance. the miata - balance. the rx8 - balance. mazda hasn't really focused on POWER or brute force. it focuses on the driving experience...and it shows in their cars.

 

I didn't say it couldn't perform but the fact that Nissan completely scraped that car and everything it stood for to go with a more bare bones sport car (which is what the original Z was) to create the current 350Z speaks for its self. Then I see they are going to make the 370Z even lighter means they don't want to get on that cycle of heavier, more technology, more expensive, then no sales ever again.

As far as a 911 Turbo, the 300zx didn't come close except maybe to the '89 (or previous) 911 Turbo which was quickly replaced with a faster model in '91 then the much faster 993 Turbo in '93 which crushed most anything in site at that time.

 

300ZX came out in 1983

 

z32 ('89+) 300zx was more comparable to the carrera than the 911 turbo. the twin turbo 300zx was in fact pretty awesome and definitely one of the best japanese sports cars during the *bubble time* before they all got wiped out by the economy and suv's. it was extremely heavy but handled real well and was very quick and fast, and had plenty of gadgets, ie one turbo per cylinder bank (not as cool as fd's sequential twin's, but...), 4-wheel steering, and the t-top/glass roof. it was also quite a robust car. a good sports car and grand tourer, i think most reviews favored the z as an all-arounder more than the fd. its contemporaries were the fd, supra, and 3000gt. corvettes at the time were real crappy (except maybe for the zr-1) so saying that these were better than the corvette isn't saying much. as for 911's...the best it got was the 993, which was still a dinosaur. the 993 turbo was wicked fast, so what? it's still a volkswagen beetle =P

 

im too young to remmeber those days,

but it sounds like Nissan and Mazda has flipped .. back then the Z was the grand tourer that went for comfort and practicality while the RX was the pure raw sports car.. now the 350z is the raw sports car with tight suspension punishing ride and 2 seats while the rx8 is the grand tourer with softer suspension and 4 seats and better daily driver

 

Yeah the 89 turbo 911, the 348 ferrari,the corvette, all these cars got there tails handed to them, the respective manufactures was not expecting the *** whipping to come from a Japanese car. Thats why Ferrarri came out with the 355, Porsche came out with a more powerful 911 Turbo, Gm upgraded the power on the vette to 300Hp/ 300TRq(even with that power, it still got handed by the TTZ).

The Z car of the 90 , when introduced , raised the bar in all areas. Then the 3000GT came out(exciting for a hot minute), the NSX, the Ferrarri fighter at the time,the RX-7 which was great in all forms, except when they caught on fire and started burning peoples houses down when parked in the garage, then the Supra , late to the party but made a fine entrance to dominate.

 

the inflation adjusted prices of those turboed japanese cars from back in the days.. such as the z32 tt, fd, and supra tt might actually be more expensive than what the GT-R cost today

 

I don't think this was the one in question, it was the 89+. The original 300ZX was a joke though I always though it looked cool. And I don't dislike the '90's 300ZX (I used to drool over it) but when the FD dropped it made it look like more of a luxury car then a sports car.

The point is (and to get back on topic): I respected Mazda's minimalist design philosophy when the FD was released and it was the total opposite of what Nissan (and most sports car makers at the time) was doing. The FD saved on weight in every aspect (down to the drilled pedals) and followed more of a Colin Chapman (Lotus) principle of light weight design (less is more). This is why it didn't need 300-330 hp to easily run with the 300ZX. The 300ZX weighed over 3500 lbs at a time when cars didn't have carry all the heavy safety equipment that cars of today do. That is ridiculous. What did the FD weight? Like 2600 lbs. I've always respected companies that actually try to design an overall balanced sports car - not something they just cram more power into to overcome the weight. This is half-***. Porsche is another example of this. They usually aren't the most powerful in their immediate class but they don't half to be. They focus on weight savings/balance and handling dynamics first.

 

Definitely raised the bar but it was short live IMO when the FD was released. The NSX was great in that it was a kind of a minimalist car when it came out and made the exotic cars actually produce reliable quality cars.

 

I'm too young to know but from what I read the R32 GT-R which came out in 89, pretty much dominated everything anyways...

 

Very true... that is why I really like Mazda now, there so focused on making balanced sports cars and coupes. I owned 3 Z cars and my favorite on was my 1980 280Z before they added the "X" to it . That car reminded me of my RX-8, its was a great all around car, a bit raw in form and function, 99.9% of the time the 280Z would always leave me smiling.

 

On japanese/european shores it dominated , here in the US, no skylines.

 

i know, im just saying its tough to talk about the 300zx or the rx7 fd raising the bar or whatever during that era when the R32 GT-R was dominating so much that they were getting banned from races. though not released in the US, It still competed against the rx7 and 300Zx and the afore mentioned US and European cars too

 

The main US players in the early 90's were the 300ZX, Supra, and RX-7. I don't count the 3000GT as I blinked or perhaps took a short nap and apparently missed 95% of it's popular life. The FD actually went up pretty well against the NSX. In terms of price to performance ratio, the FD was pretty nice.

The first time I ever saw a picture of a Skyline the first thing that popped into my head was "that's a family car!" The Skyline looked like a big vehicle that just added power and all wheel drive (on some of them). It's amazing what those 2 things can do. We still see it today. Take a small tincan of a POS car, make it fast with a turbo, give it all wheel drive, and suddenly everyone and their mother is praising it. Of course the Skyline actually was a good car underneath so let's not get too carried away.

 

except for the cayenne (and what an exception!), in which case it was just weight and weight and adding more engine and turbo and power and more weight and more power and electronics to counter more weight

 

in terms of raw numbers, the fd was comparable to the nsx. however, nsx was important in that it was the first real japanese *super car,* among the first to use lots of aluminum, the harbinger of vtec, and among the first high quality everyday user-friendly super car. vtec is obviously important, as is aluminum construction, and nsx had a part in ushering ferrari to vastly improve their cars, culminating in the f355. and even today, i view the audi r8 as vw/audi's nsx. as for the 3000gt, sure it was ugly and big and fat and kinda sucked, but credit is probably still due to mitsubishi for sticking its toe in the water

 

wait are you taking about the Skyline or a WRX (STI)?

 

1) The FD weighed almost 2,800lbs

2) My '92 ZTT was a life saver when I totaled it. It was built like a tank and surprisingly safe.

3) Part of the reason the 300ZXTT weighed so much was an iron block bomb proof VG30-DET which had turbo pluming on both sides. Then there's the crazy rear subframe which house a complex multilink rear suspension, there was 2-way adjustable shocks, leather power seats, an overbuilt 5 speed trans, and big disc brakes.

4) Also note that the 911 Turbo is also a pig with a 3,500lbs curb weight which it uses 480hp to overcome. This is why people often perfer the GT3 or other 911 versions.


The Z car was built to take down the Corvette of the day and it did so without batting an eye. Big fat curb weight and all. It also didn't cause grass fires, have a wacky sequential turbo set up, or blow any apex seals. It was also chosen as the better car more often than not when compared to it's peers. It was an all around great car as much as the RX-7 which I got a chance to drive once.

 

Very funny, but the WRX/STI as well as the Evo are all very much a drivers car. Econo roots or not, they have a very high smile per mile value.

 

That's what all wheel drive and a little bit of power can do. If my Civic came with all wheel drive and twice the horsepower, EVERYONE would rave about it and suddenly call it the most beautiful thing they had ever seen. That's the power of a couple of simple changes.

 

This is true and not representative of Porsche's overall assortment of cars today or yesterday. I simply brought the 993 911 Turbo up to show that it was one of the top dogs in it's day and obliterated a 90-96 300ZX when it was released in 1993. And no I'm not comparing the two, it was brought up when it was mentioned the 300ZX would out perform a 911 Turbo. A car that ran to 60 in under 4 and a half seconds and hit the quarter mile in just over 13 was pretty rare in the early 90's. I bring up strait line performance because I don't consider any of the 911 turbo's as track cars. Like you mentioned - that's what the GT3's and other 2 wheel drive versions are for. It weighed a little less than the 300ZX with all it's technology and plus had a heavy all-wheel drive drivetrain.

Weights of cars today are irrelevant as they all are usually much heavier with all the safety equipment required in the US. That's why we just now got modern lightwieght Lotus's and never got any light weight TVR's over here.

Like I said before I'm not trashing the 300ZX (I always wanted one too)- in the long run it outsold the FD by far, I just appreciate what companies like Lotus, Porsche, and even Mazda do as far as designing good balanced, lightweight cars. S2000 and Miata's are more examples of this.