When I drove the Nissan Z Nismo back in 2023, I was blown away by its impressive chassis tuning and strong twin-turbo V-6. It was a far better car than the base Z, save for one problem: the only transmission was a nine-speed torque converter automatic. It wasn’t a bad gearbox, per se, but it didn’t fit the character of the car, and spoiled the experience.
Well, two years later, the Japanese carmaker has finally decided to address my (and many other enthusiasts’) concerns. In an interview with Automotive News, Nissan Americas Chairperson Christian Meunier confirmed the Z Nismo would finally be getting the third pedal it always deserved.
When asked about which upcoming products he was most excited about, Meunier spilled the beans on the upcoming stick shift option.
I love Z. So obviously, Z is very exciting. We have a lot of special editions in the pipeline. We have a Nismo manual transmission coming. We have a lot of exciting things happening on the Z side.
Meunier didn’t reveal any other details, like when the manual might become available, or if it would cost any more than the automatic model. A Nissan spokesperson did not immediately respond when reached by The Autopian via email.
Source: Nissan
The lack of a manual transmission came as a surprise when the model was launched, but Nissan’s director of advanced product planning, Paul Hawson, told Road & Track back in 2023 that the customers it talked to preferred outright speed over driver connection and nostalgia. From that interview:
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.
But even back then, Hawson admitted that if there was enough demand, Nissan could make a manual Z Nismo happen.
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 customer demand (and Nissan’s desire to launch nearly 20 new or updated models this year) likely led to the manual Z Nismo’s creation, its closest competitor, the Supra, might’ve also had something to do with it. That car also launched without a manual transmission, back in 2020, before customer demand led Toyota to release a manual version in 2022. By the end of 2024, more than half of all Supras leaving dealerships had three pedals.
Source: BMW
The manual transmission has seen a localized surge in demand elsewhere in the sports car segment. The Supra’s sibling car, the BMW Z4 convertible, got a manual variant last year. It didn’t take long for buyers to notice. By the end of 2024, 65 percent of Z4s sold in America had stick shifts.
Nissan, smartly, is just trying to captialize on this wave of demand for sub-$100,000 stick shift sports cars. The result is a good car made great. Hopefully, anyway. I still need to drive it to find out for sure.
Top photo: Nissan
The post Nissan Adds Manual Gearbox To Z Nismo, The One Thing I’ve Been Asking Of Them appeared first on The Autopian.
