Nissan 300ZX review:
Before-
After only 3 laps, I think I’ve pretty much got this car summed up. It looks rather boring, it handles like the Titanic, and it smokes and goes like a battleship. Oh, and a slide in this is both entertaining and murderous at the same time. The rears lose grip with very little warning, but that’s to be expected considering the width of those skinny little unicycle wheels it comes with. And because the tires are so damn thin, it means that it doesn’t really matter what tires you fit it with. Not a particularly big problem with ~280hp (didn’t check, don’t have much time), but with nearly twice that going through the same set of tires, you really do need to start worrying. Then there’s the mid-range punch. Small test, I’m going ~52mph in 4th, the engine is revving at 3000rpm, and let’s see what happens when I give it full throttle and see what speed it reaches by the end of the runway. 52mph, full throttle, 57mph……62mph……70mph…113mph…137mph…145mph……and we’re running out of runway. It’ll actually do 147mph before you have to even consider braking, and even then, you’ll have plenty of space left between you and the barriers. With that type of performance, it would be nice to know that it could go around a corner with a hint of grace. But it can’t! Oversteer is constant, your only option is how much…a lot, a fair amount, or just a little bit of smoke from the massive arse. Laptime? Well, the STi 400 with 400hp (obviously, hence the name) and a little bit less weight, did it in 1:11.978. This did it, with nearly 150hp more, in 1:18.191. The Honda Civic VTi-R is no more than a second behind. I see what RJ means by it being ‘not as fast as it should be’. Because it just isn’t.
After-
It’s grips better, it handles better, it doesn’t roll around like a cross-channel ferry and it’s such a dramatic change it could catch you off guard. I know it caught me off, I was so shocked at the changes that I forget to change up! And the speeds it can get up to are so immense, that you need to remember to brake a bit earlier as well. The brakes aren’t as good, it seems, as they were before. Actually no…it just takes some time to adapt to it. Don’t attack the brakes, brake to about halfway and leave it there at half. It may take some time and it will bite back at you if you forget, but it makes driving this car much easier. As for the rest of this car, well, as said, it doesn’t corner on its door handles anymore, it can contain the power just that bit better and it’s just sooo much more lively to drive. It understeers slightly if you mess up the corner entry, but just use the mid range torque to haul the arse around and it will slide with the best of them, covering the track in bits of rubber and converting its rear tires to smoke. But unlike before, you have some control over it, it’s not slide, slide, slide, exit corner still sideways and finally straighten. It’s more flexible than that, because of something called ‘grip’. Be warned though, although it has it, it doesn’t like it much, so it’ll always find the chance to revert to its oversteery ways if you let it. Especially when the engine is effectively a landmine from 2nd to 3rd gear. In first, it’s a nuclear bomb. You touch the throttle when you’re cornering in first, and it’ll attack the redline with so much fury that it’ll instantly kick the tail out. But just tread carefully, and it won’t bite. It’s faster if you drive carefully too, with a lap of 1:14.635, a 4 second improvement, it’s just slightly off the pace of a Ruf RGT. Not bad for a comfy sofa.
Laptime: (Tested on TGTT)
1:18.191 (before)
1:14.635 (after)