2014 NISSAN 370Z Roadster Review

Gone are the times when a sports car was supposed to simply feed its driver with go-fast sensations. Nowadays we wouldn’t be surprised if a two-seater was used as a Wi-Fi hotspot in some university campus. Well, the Nissan 370Z simply comes along and says “neah”.

Since it came to the world in 2008 (2009 in America), Nissan has kept the 370Z largely unchanged. Until now that is. For the 2013 model year, the Japanese have come out with... a rather modest facelift.

Still, we had a pretty good time when we drove the Nissan 370Z Roadster, so we figured a spin in the revamped model could only do good. We wanted to remind ourselves and everybody else how the 370Z feels, mainly because we need to set this things in our minds as a benchmark for a comparison with the future generation.

While the 370Z was simply an evolution of the 350Z, the latter was a radical transformation compared to its predecessor, the 300ZX of the nineties. Using this Microsoft Windows release logic, we’re expecting the successor of the Nissan 370Z, which shouldn’t be that far off, to bring quite a blast of changes.

Nonetheless, we’ll stick to our 370Z Roadster facelift test car for the moment. Frankly, mentioning that the pre-revamp test car was Black and this one is Red would probably do the job. The exterior changes are limited anyway. The front fascia’s received some vertical LED strips and there’s a body-colored deflector at the back. Oh and the wheels are new, even though you’ll need some time to spot this.

While the Nissan 350Z Roadster was a “hey, let’s chop the roof off” project, the 370Z Roadster was planned from the very beginning. This makes the convertible much more fluent as far as the eye is concerned.

The 370Z, Roadster or not, may be aging, but we still like its no-compromise visual approach. The long hood and the workout-style rear wings are enough to make a statement.