B-road attacking coupe in reasonable budget?

[ZackM]

Herbs said:

Sorry i'm missing something, the bar in the AMG is right behind the seats and acts like a bulkhead for large items in the boot whereas the 350Z is bang slap in the middle of the boot, whats was the point of your post relating to a TT boot with a picture of a completely different car with a bar in a completely different place?

I had not seen any other cars with a beam across like in the 350Z and then I saw the AMG GT and saw there are others. This was the only point of me pointing it out. And I didn't post anything relating to a TT boot. I quoted him because he was talking about the beam in the 350Z. The TT was just part of the sentence and if I cut it off it would be missing something.

It's in a different place, yes. But they serve the same purpose. In the 350Z and in the AMG the bar is there for extra torsional rigidity. This is putting performance over practicability, as it should be in a real sports car. They put it there because they probably thought buyers of a sports car wouldn't mind if it made it slightly more impractical, but gave the car better performance.

I know I don't mind. If I want practicability I buy a minivan.

[coldel]

350z boot is never going to take 3 suitcases, 2 hand bags, and 5 bags of shopping. But I hope you are not expecting to use it on the shopping runs! My wife and I had breaks away in the zed all the time, we drove it across Europe for 5 days and had plenty room in the back for the luggage. You can't get a chest of drawers in there but why would you (saying that a friend of mine in a 350z bought and picked up a folding massage table in one!).

If you need to sling two medium suitcases in along with some other bits and bobs its fine. You also get lots of cubby's all around the car behind the seats etc. When I bought my 19inch wheels with tyres I got them all in the car in one go also ;-)

[DoubleD]

To me that brace looks like an after thought. Surely a well designed car wouldnt need a huge thing like that in the boot.

[coldel]

DoubleD said:

To me that brace looks like an after thought. Surely a well designed car wouldnt need a huge thing like that in the boot.

Not at all, if anything it is deliberate as the Z motif is clearly visible on a cool looking strut brace out the rear window. Sure they could have put something thin and wimpy there with no presence so you can fit luggage in, but the car is not for people to stow three weeks worth of camping gear into, its built for GT cruising and adding chassis bracing to prevent chassis twisting under strain etc. To be honest if its a deal breaker, should be looking at an Audi S3 or similar. I got two decent sized suitcases in on at trip to Europe, if you have never owned the car its easy to look at pictures that over exaggerate the size of the space in the back and come to the wrong conclusions.

[DoubleD]

But surely if it had been well designed in the first place it wouldnt be required.

To me it looks like they designed the car and realised it wasnt very rigid, so they added a brace. Im not saying that is what happened, but it does look like an after thought to me.

[coldel]

DoubleD said:

But surely if it had been well designed in the first place it wouldnt be required.

To me it looks like they designed the car and realised it wasnt very rigid, so they added a brace. Im not saying that is what happened, but it does look like an after thought to me.

As I said, it is there as much for showing off the Z brand than just the bracing. They could have flung a thin piece of metal across but then it would have looked pretty poor and not in the ethos of the brand. Google the 240z boot and tell me what you see. Thats the point. The bracing is a bonus on ANY car no matter how well designed it is, you could remove this brace and drive it and it would not handle so well like any other car if you removed their bracing, it doesnt make it badly designed. The idea was to carry the feel and brand of the zed car into the early 2000s, these cars are not about a German company spending billions on refining every mm of the car to precision and creating a numb driving experience.

Ultimately as I say its not as impractical as some pictures taken at an angle might show you, having actually owned one you can easily get two suitcases in there, plenty enough space for most things. If you regularly need more space, you are buying the wrong car.

Edited by coldel on Tuesday 25th September 20:54

[ZackM]

coldel said:

350z boot is never going to take 3 suitcases, 2 hand bags, and 5 bags of shopping. But I hope you are not expecting to use it on the shopping runs! My wife and I had breaks away in the zed all the time, we drove it across Europe for 5 days and had plenty room in the back for the luggage. You can't get a chest of drawers in there but why would you (saying that a friend of mine in a 350z bought and picked up a folding massage table in one!).

If you need to sling two medium suitcases in along with some other bits and bobs its fine. You also get lots of cubby's all around the car behind the seats etc. When I bought my 19inch wheels with tyres I got them all in the car in one go also ;-)

You are preaching to the choir here.

Like I have been saying, it doesn't bother me at all. It's a GT. A sports car. If I want practicality I would buy a minivan. Or something posing as a sports car such as a TT.

It reminds me of a guy on youtube who had a Ferrari 360 and was trying to transport a flat screen in it, so he strapped it to the roof. He did it for comedic effect and I'm sure the box was actually empty.

But even for comedy it makes no sense. A person who can afford a Ferrari can surely afford a second car or even third. He wouldn't need to pick up a flat screen in the 360. He can actually afford to just have it delivered AND installed. I know he was trying to show how it would be to daily drive a Ferrari as the only car. But who would do that and what would be the point?

Complaining about practicability is a 2 seats sports car is futile. It's like complaining there is too many calories in McDonald's food. The person should just buy a FWD hot hatch then if space is priority. Or better, buy a minivan and have all the space he wants.

Edited by ZackM on Tuesday 25th September 21:38

[ZackM]

coldel said:

Ultimately as I say its not as impractical as some pictures taken at an angle might show you, having actually owned one you can easily get two suitcases in there, plenty enough space for most things. If you regularly need more space, you are buying the wrong car.

Even though I'm not really worried about luggage space it's good to hear from people who actually know the car that it's not a big problem. Cheers!

To me it always looked adequate for a weekend run. All that it's needed.

[coldel]

If you look here you can see the boot space is not properly represented in photos https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&... the gap between the boot lip and the bar is actually a fair distance.

[ZackM]

Thanks for posting the link to that thread. I will go through it. It seems like a good read.

Looking at this picture I fully agree with you the boot is larger than it looks in pictures:



I really neither need or expect more than this from a 2 seats sports car.

And look at this:

[stevekoz]

coldel said:

As I said, it is there as much for showing off the Z brand than just the bracing. They could have flung a thin piece of metal across but then it would have looked pretty poor and not in the ethos of the brand. Google the 240z boot and tell me what you see. Thats the point. The bracing is a bonus on ANY car no matter how well designed it is, you could remove this brace and drive it and it would not handle so well like any other car if you removed their bracing, it doesnt make it badly designed. The idea was to carry the feel and brand of the zed car into the early 2000s, these cars are not about a German company spending billions on refining every mm of the car to precision and creating a numb driving experience.

Ultimately as I say its not as impractical as some pictures taken at an angle might show you, having actually owned one you can easily get two suitcases in there, plenty enough space for most things. If you regularly need more space, you are buying the wrong car.

Edited by coldel on Tuesday 25th September 20:54

I don't know if its true or not, but do remember from a conversation with someone at japfest, that the original concept for the 350z was not as a 2 seater but as 2+2.

When it came to initial tests they found that the body was far too wallowy and didn't handle very well at all without extra bracing in the rear. Which made a 2+2 difficult. So the final solution was to remove the seats and leave the bracing in place which just so happened to be a nice spot to have a "Z" logo.

May or may not be true but makes a nice story.

[coldel]

stevekoz said:

I don't know if its true or not, but do remember from a conversation with someone at japfest, that the original concept for the 350z was not as a 2 seater but as 2+2.

When it came to initial tests they found that the body was far too wallowy and didn't handle very well at all without extra bracing in the rear. Which made a 2+2 difficult. So the final solution was to remove the seats and leave the bracing in place which just so happened to be a nice spot to have a "Z" logo.

May or may not be true but makes a nice story.

Not sure, there is the 350gt import which has back seats and has similar dimensions same engine etc. Its very similar layout to the 240z which is a two seater, I cannot believe that they followed the Z lineage with a 4 seater with no 2 seater option and then last minute switched the back seats out and put a brace in. If you take the plastic off, the brace is just a flat piece of metal which could easily have been shaped much smaller and sat up against the rear seats (much like the one did on my R33) and achieved the same bracing effect. I have heard many more stories that it is a deliberate design, so show off the Z heritage through the rear window.

[DoubleD]

Thats a nice story, but why would you design something like that just so you can stick a badge on it? Why would you make a car less practical than it needs to be? I know a coupe isnt about practicality, but a manufacturer wouldnt miss out on potential sales just so they can have a badge in the boot. To me it really does look like an afterthought and more like they realised that the car needed more bracing late in development.

[coldel]

DoubleD said:

Thats a nice story, but why would you design something like that just so you can stick a badge on it? Why would you make a car less practical than it needs to be? I know a coupe isnt about practicality, but a manufacturer wouldnt miss out on potential sales just so they can have a badge in the boot. To me it really does look like an afterthought and more like they realised that the car needed more bracing late in development.

The chassis is a multi car chassis I think called the FM chassis and Nissan used it across a number of cars - the same goes for the 370z I believe. It wasn't designed just for the 350z then they got all the way to the end then suddenly discovered it doesn't work - I am not an engineer by any means but I am pretty sure chassis are tested for torsional effects long before they get to the end of the process then suddenly someone says it needs a big brace. Like I say when you remove the plastic covers the brace itself is pretty thin, but wide, it would make sense from a structural point of view to have a completely different shape i.e. something round and thicker but everyone I have spoken to who has mentioned the brace says its for effect.

[aka_kerrly]

Nissan would NOT have sold Skyline 350GTs if by making the car a 4 seater it became a floppy mess. Whilst by no means a true Skyline (in my opinion) they can't be much worse than a 350Z , the main issue is that the majority of the ones I've seen are automatics which is an "automatic" NO for me. The manual ones command quite a premium at which point a 370Z/R33+4GTST is a far better buy

[ZackM]

coldel said:

The chassis is a multi car chassis I think called the FM chassis and Nissan used it across a number of cars - the same goes for the 370z I believe. It wasn't designed just for the 350z then they got all the way to the end then suddenly discovered it doesn't work -

aka_kerrly said:

Nissan would NOT have sold Skyline 350GTs if by making the car a 4 seater it became a floppy mess.

I totally agree with the above.

It's interesting how there is only one person arguing that the brace is an after thought, while multiple people, and people who have actually owned the cars and seem to know way more about Nissan are repeatedly saying it wasn't.

Edited by ZackM on Monday 1st October 09:59

[DoubleD]

I havent said that it is an afterthought, I have said that to me it looks like an afterthought. Big difference.

Anyway how are the test drives going?

[ZackM]

DoubleD said:

I havent said that it is an afterthought, I have said that to me it looks like an afterthought. Big difference.

Anyway how are the test drives going?

Yeah, but you also went on and on, insisting on it, which basically eliminates that difference you are talking about.

Test driving is going well, thank you.

[ilikejam]

Is this going to be the longest running car buying thread where someone hasn't actually bought a car?

[DoubleD]

ZackM said:

DoubleD said:

I havent said that it is an afterthought, I have said that to me it looks like an afterthought. Big difference.

Anyway how are the test drives going?

Yeah, but you also went on and on, insisting on it, which basically eliminates that difference you are talking about.

Test driving is going well, thank you.

Where did I insist?

What did you think of the car when you drove it?