Nissan 350Z GT-S Concept

Will this 382bhp supercharged concept become a car you can buy? Brett Fraser drives it and finds out.

The noise is incredible. An alarming mixture of shriek, howl, whistle, scream and scratch. And it’s very, very loud. Loud enough to be heard by the car in front and sufficiently menacing to have the driver edge over to allow you room to pass lest he (or she) be punished by the demonic force lurking behind.

When you drive the Nissan 350Z GT-S – the ‘concept’ car initiated by the UK PR team and developed by Nissan engineers from Cranfield in their spare time – the racket from its supercharger dominates the driving experience and scares other road users. Truth be told, on long journeys you’ll flick the blower off to stop the noise sawing through your skull, but when conditions are right its all-pervading sense of mechanical violence serves as the ideal soundtrack to the 25 per cent increase in power that it cajoles from the Zed’s 3.5-litre V6 engine.

Nissan might build it

Just the din that the GT-S makes would send many car company execs scurrying away to take cover behind EC rulebooks, but the rebellious spirit within Nissan UK at the moment is hard at work trying to make this car a production reality. When we say ‘production’ we don’t mean squeezing them out in their thousands like Micras from Sunderland, but something more like the 50 a year you can build up and get through SVA (Single Vehicle Approval) tests rather than having to undertake full-scale homologation.

It’s far from a done deal that anything at all will happen with the GT-S, but there’s plenty of positive pressure being applied from within the company and even if it’s impossible to sell the whole package complete, the components are largely off-the-shelf items that could be retailed individually – the supercharger is from the Swiss firm Novidem, for instance, and Strosek is the source of the bodykit. The Bilstein dampers are the trick bits – developed by Bilstein and Nissan especially for British back roads – but now that their settings have been calibrated it’s a comparatively simple operation to produce them in small numbers.

Charging on

The massive intercooler, barely contained by the mesh grille in the nose of the GT-S, gives you some indication of a serious upgrade in power; lift the bonnet and shining pipework and induction gubbins and purposeful-looking blue hoses confirm that picture. The addition of the blower raises power from 300bhp to 380bhp and swells the torque output by 53lb-ft so that it peaks at 313lb ft.

Those are big gains, yet curiously the GT-S doesn’t feel as impressively well hung as the figures suggest. You sure as hell know it’s powered by a meaty motor, but the rocketship effect you might expect from all the extra ponies doesn’t materialise.

In part that’s because the Zed’s V6 has never been a rev-head, getting gruff and uncultured at the top-end, denying the big Nissan the manic high-revving energy that most of us associate with travelling insanely fast. Instead it’s got genuine brawn that bulges its way to the surface between 3,000 and 6,000rpm and makes the 3.5-litre V6 feel as though it has twice the cubic capacity and a couple more cylinders; to begin with you might mistake this beefy delivery for lazy performance, yet if you clock-watch the speedo or (on a circuit, of course) hunt down other sports cars you know to be serious players, then the GT-S’s performance proves itself to up there in the junior exotica league.

Another way to assess what difference the supercharger makes is to switch it off using the innocuous little button to the right and in front of the gearlever. Cruise along for a while – in blessed silence – without the supercharger engaged and you begin to understand why the standard Zed has been so well received and you’ll probably find it decently brisk. Stab the button again and, after a momentary pause in proceedings as the supercharger ties itself into the induction loop, there’s a substantially and deeply satisfying wallop as your pace picks up aggressively. No doubts now about the effectiveness of supercharging, while turning on the boost in this way also amplifies your perception of the car’s performance.

For the record, and according to Nissan’s claims, the GT-S scorches from zero to 60 mph in 4.8 seconds, a clear second quicker than the standard car, while the 0-100mph time falls by an impressive 2.5 seconds.

Bruiser

Everything about the GT-S (and the Zed in general, to a lesser degree) shouts old-fashioned bruiser, in a positive way. The burly mid-range, the robust action of the gearchange and the clutch pedal, the beefy steering and woofly exhaust note, none of it is the stuff of slick, modern, computer-honed sports cars – that counts as a Very Good Thing in my book, even if over long distances the hardcore nature of the beast can grind you down a bit.

The ride, too, can rankle over rougher surfaces when it pounds and thumps, occasionally becoming so out of sorts that the tyres hop sideways a couple of inches through bumpy corners. Yet that’s just a worst-case scenario (though nevertheless one to be wary of), and for the most part the GT-S’s chassis is grippy and blessed with the fine balance and predictable on-the-limit behaviour of a well-sorted front-engined rear-driver. Sideways merchants and drifters will love the fact that the bigger outputs make it even easier to punt the tail out of line, while the rest of us will be grateful that the Zed’s traction and stability control system can be turned on as well as off.

Mean demeanour

Nissan’s choice of black paintwork for the GT-S was inspired, for it contributes suitably sinister visuals to go with the eerie hollering of the supercharger. Even the gold-coloured 18in Volk alloys have a slightly dusty, grimy finish to them, adding to the impression that this is a car made purely for the purpose of going quickly rather than showboating.

Nissan reckons that with the supercharger switched out then the GT-S could be used as your daily wheels. The only trouble is that pressing the supercharger button is one of those little automotive addictions and the moment you do that all pretence of mild manners and everyday acceptability vanish; the car turns into a bit of a monster too.

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