Nissan Z vs Toyota Supra

[NocturnalEmber]

$30,000 territory, sure its a good car for the price, but you can't escape the potential head cracking issues that have plagued that VR30 engine. For me even at $30,000~ it's not worth the gamble. The local dealer near me had a Heritage edition (2024 model year) for about a year and a half just sitting on the lot, they eventually ended up getting rid of it (was an auto, likely why it took so long to sell.)

I will admit the lack of android auto was one of my main complaints about the supra, but it looks like there's finally a substitute for the MMI Prime that I might look into here soon.

I think the final straw for me selling my Z was the auto rev match would hold the RPM's at 3,000~ when i would put the car in neutral, almost like a vacuum leak. I took it to the dealer and after confirming the issue, the service manager tried to tell me my nismo intakes (factory accessory with factory warranty if installed by Nissan at time of car purchase, one year if not, mind you) were causing a lean condition and were responsible for my issue.

Now I tried to explain to this guy that its a factory accessory, warrantied, etc and he wouldn't even take it into the bay to look at it without trying to charge me a diagnostic fee, but at that point if their techs were that ignorant I wouldn't want them touching my car anyway. I sold it about two days later.

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[jmikes]

An objective POV from someone who has owned both for about a year apiece:

I traded my 2023 3.0 Premium 6MT for a 2024 Performance 6MT Z. At the time I was wanting something that felt more JDM, and I felt I'd give the Z a try. Never owned a Z before, but I've owned my fair share of 240sx's and even some S12 and fwd 200sx's back in the day (note: Nissan is not the same as it was, they've been riding their own coattails for about 20 years now.)

I knew the Z was based on the 370 chassis, but I'd question why they even bothered calling it an RZ34, its about a 1:1 minus some marketing about chassis stiffness. The Z, as much as I hate to say it, is a really subpar car that deserved better. Lipstick on a pig basically. A 370Z chassis which is based heavily on the 350 that preceded it; you are basically buying a 25 year old chassis for 60,000$ (don't even get me started on the Nismo Z's.)

The car just screams cheap Nissan. The underside has relatively no under panel protection whatsoever, leaving the sub frames exposed to the elements. Interior bits are all reused and found on everything from a Sentra to the 370 that proceeded it. You're basically getting a parts bin car.

I'll give them credit, they managed to make a creative car by raiding their own parts bin, but that isn't the point here. Paying a premium for a non premium experience is my biggest problem.

The VR30 is open deck, has horrible thermal runaway problems with the IAT's and air to water system, the car is absolutely horrible with traction on the stock tires, the transmission does not like 1-2 shifts, and the cost of modding the VR30 is just not very great in comparison to the Supra. Switching to an air to air system (while hacking up the cars rad support to do it) is the only real way to prevent thermal runaway. Even spending $2,000~ USD on AMS intercoolers for the A2W setup only delays the inevitable.

The last straw for me though, was the cracked heads. Q50/Q60 owners for a long time have been dealing with what was called a "porous block" at the time, but was actually determined by AMS to be cracks forming on each head around the head bolt bosses of one of the exhaust head studs causing a coolant leak. Basically the coolant passages left enough absence of material there that it created a stress riser and people were having coolant mixing issues because of it.

Supposedly people say that was "fixed" with the Z's, but two owners have claimed to have had that issue happen to them. At that point I wasn't willing to keep a car I didn't want (and deal with Nissan's abhorrent dealer service simultaneously) while also having that in the back of my head as well.

Sold the car, and I'm now back in a 2025 3.0 6MT. I still am not crazy about the BMW parts, but the car, for what it is, is very well done. I would say it was more of a culture shock to me than anything.

I wanted to like the Z, I really did, but the car is just not worth the price and absolutely does not compare to the Supra in serious competition. The Nismo Z's, even with a manual option, I can't see how someone can justify paying Cayman like prices for a 25 year old chassis (you can bolt 90% of the parts onto a base or 'performance' level Z with no issues.)

My .02, take that for what you will.

I have long said that the decision to go from 370z to supra was one that I should have made way sooner, the 370z is just so horribly outdated and cheap feeling, and every little mod I did to the 370z was just me chasing what the Supra was bone stock. The new Z, as much as I have a weird love for it, is no doubt just a 370z with a body kit, one of the cheapest infotainment systems of the 2020s, and an infiniti engine with very little power potential.

 

[NocturnalEmber]

I have long said that the decision to go from 370z to supra was one that I should have made way sooner, the 370z is just so horribly outdated and cheap feeling, and every little mod I did to the 370z was just me chasing what the Supra was bone stock. The new Z, as much as I have a weird love for it, is no doubt just a 370z with a body kit, one of the cheapest infotainment systems of the 2020s, and an infiniti engine with very little power potential.

When the 370 debuted it was basically that peak "Nissan/Renault" of shitty interior. I still can't believe how ugly the steering wheel and the controls are, let alone the infotainment screen. I once heard a friend of mine say "Nissan is the Chrysler of Japan" and man does that statement ring true from about 2009 to now.

The infortainment is bad, but I did like having android auto, that was a nice plus. As much as I like the Supra, lets be honest here, it does have some absolutely asinine concessions, that being one of them.

People say the Z is more of a GT car and the Supra is more of an outright sports car, but I'll disagree with that here.

The three gauge pod they've carried over from almost every Z car generation ever made does wonders for telemetry, but the turbine speed gauge and volt gauge aren't exactly the most important data points I'd want to see on a track. The gauge cluster however, being fully digital, does let you display boost and tire pressure on separate sides, which is nice.

Traction on the performance Z is an absolute joke, I can't imagine what its like with a base model and no LSD. Those Bridgestone Potenza S007's are some of the worst tires I've had on a car. Whether that was intentional to make the car seem more tail happy I don't know, but even in the dry traction was awful in first and second gears going wide open. Third would still break loose in the wet. For the record my car was stock, save some nismo intakes, which aren't a dramatic power gain.

The transmission itself was bad, and likely shares more parts with the CD009 than I'd like to know. First to second is an awfully uncomfortable shift even during normal driving. It won't grind, but if you've ever tried driving a car with a failing master/release cylinder and you start getting shifts that don't grind but don't go in smoothly either, that's about the best way I can describe it, this was a near constant issue unless you were driving 30+ minutes.

Fun note: you can bolt the Z front end onto a 370 chassis. Just like all the Silvia swaps of the time.

You *can* make power on a VR30, but at what cost? The open deck design and thermal runaway (nissan didn't even use the air to water on their competition cars if that tells you anything) paired with a very dated chassis don't really help things whatsoever, and the fear of the head cracking is not something I wanted even remotely near my thought process on a car I'm trying to enjoy.

Nissan just can't get out of their own way. Like I mentioned previously, most of what they use on the "nismo" Z aside from the extra factory welds are just bolt in parts, and not just that, some are bolt in parts carried over from the Nismo 370. They really make a hard case for value proposition here. I could find a Nismo 370 salvage car and bolt these chassis braces right on, but even then, chassis rigidity over the performance was minimal at best, you are going to be fighting a lot more problems with this chassis before the incremental rigidity comes into play here.

The engine to me just isn't a great platform. The factory turbos spool fast but due to the head design and space constraints, aftermarket options are severely limited and you give low end response up for any high end gains with the current replacement turbo offerings. While its generally accepted that going to a larger turbo will result in less low end response, with turbo technology today I'm sure if someone bothered to bolt up some EFR turbos that could address that, but its just one problem of many.

Here's what I mentioned regarding the VR30 issue, AMS I think is respected enough I would trust this analysis and teardown, seems thorough enough. But who would want to spend $25,000 on a sleeved block after that is beyond me. With Nissans current financial state, if this does become a problem, I can't imagine them rectifying it properly by any means. They would likely kick the can down the road until it was impossible to ignore, then issue a recall and likely just put the same defective heads on the car as opposed to redesigning new ones so by the time the issue reoccurs, again, it's not their problem anymore.

I just couldn't justify a $60,000~ purchase for that. I'd gladly buy and wrench on another 90's nissan, they were and are very special cars from that era, but their current flagship sports car just isn't worth the risk imho.

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