Saving a Beloved Muscle Car.(the 240Z)(Brief Article)

Shortly after Nissan deep-sixed its near-legendary Z car in 1996, "Mad" Mike Taylor, head of the American Z-Car Club Association, paid a visit to Nissan's soon-to-be president Yoshikazu Hanawa. Few people mourned the demise of the bloated, overpriced 300ZX, the last model, but the original poor-man's Jaguar, the 240Z, had enjoyed near-cult status. Thousands of Z car owners, Taylor reported, were crestfallen over the company's decision. "It surprised him that people were enthused about Zs," Taylor recalls. "He took copious notes."

Hanawa probably didn't know it at the time, but grief-stricken Nissan insiders stuck in the denial stage were hell-bent on ressurrecting a new, leaner and meaner Z. "Internally, we called it a 'gestation period'," says John Yukawa, a senior engineer. One team of 10 or so engineers, reporting to a senior vice president, began secret "after five" meetings. Their project, code-named MS for Middle Sport, sought to fashion an inexpensive Z car from a platform designed for the Silvia, Nissan's top-selling coupe. A year later, they presented a hand-built prototype to Hanawa. He spun it around a test track, said he "liked it a lot" and ordered them to conduct "further studies." "It had a great shape," says Yutaka Katayama, father of the 240Z, who also test-drove the Middle Sport that day. By then, ...