Why SPEED Isn't Everything | The Smoking Tire

Where'd my legs go? The Nissan Z has been on sale for a few years now. In 2024, they sold 3,164 of them in the United States. If that number seems small, it's because it is. That's just 0.3% of Nissan's total sales in the same year. But it did beat the Supra by 549 units, marking the first year that Nissan beat its Japanese neighbor since the two cars went on sale. Don't look up total numbers sold. We've already posted detailed reviews of the Z and the Nismo. So if you want a deeper dive, those links are in the description. In this video, we're going to find out what this badge means and if it's worth the money. The 600R is the creation of Z1 Motorsports. Z1 has been in the Nissan performance business for a quarter of a century. What began in a barn in Georgia is now a massive 15,000 square foot building complete with offices, lifts, a showroom, R&D, and inventory. Z1 Motorsports saw the 400Z as a good grand touring sports car, but they wanted to sharpen it and see what this three liter engine was capable of. I know it's not sexy under here, but they changed a lot of things, most of which you can't see. The first thing they wanted to change were the turbos. At the time of development, the aftermarket was offering hybrid turbos, which is a larger compressor in the stock housing. You can make boost, you can make power, but the turbos get hot and they didn't want to do that because they wanted this car to be able to make lots of power all day, every day. They also bolted in the supporting stuff, oil catch can, larger heat exchanger, high flow cats, and of course, a tune. When it's all said and done, this thing makes nearly 600 wheel horsepower and Z1 says it will do it reliably. All day, every day. For the money they're charging, I would hope so. It seems to have the goods, but as many cooking shows have proven, ingredients do not make the meal. So let's see how the chefs have done. Guys, are you going on a road trip this summer, sending a kid off to college this fall, maybe buying a new teenager their first car? You have to be prepared. And what that means, it doesn't necessarily mean going crazy, but it does mean the most common things that can happen, you should be ready for. And because of today's sponsor, you can. I'm talking about Wolfbox and their all new Megavolt 24 Air. This is a many in one. They say two in one, but it's a many in one. Jump starter, air compressor, and flat tires and dead batteries are the two most common problems you get on the road, right? Provides up to 40 jump starts on a full charge for any gas or diesel engine up to 10 liters. Plus it is an air compressor and with the hose can fill all four tires in an SUV or truck or a sedan. You can use it for off-roading to refill your tires or a track day. It can do that. It has a 65 watt USB-C fast charging and multiple USB-A ports. So you can charge all your devices at once, even a laptop. It's got safety features, making it virtually idiot proof. So you can't do a reverse polarity and damage your car. And it's been tested in both extreme heat and cold to deliver results no matter the conditions. And if you have a roadside emergency, there's even a strobe and flashlight. You can fully recharge it at home in two hours, keep it in your trunk. And it covers almost all your emergency needs in one. Hit the link in the description folks to get a special TST price on this hardcore Wolfbox two-in-one jump starter air compressor. And thank you to Wolfbox for sponsoring today's video. Well, it's fast. It's fast. It's 71 degrees today. And we're at about 3000 feet above sea level. And this still feels very fast. If we were at sea level, I'd probably be getting wheel spin in third because that has happened. Oh, you may be hearing that chime. That is the seatbelt chime telling me that the person sitting next to me needs to put their seatbelt on. 600 wheel horsepower, over 550 pound feet of torque. But that torque comes on at 4,300 RPM. The stock Z makes 400 horsepower and 350 pound feet of torque, but the torque kicks in at 1600 RPM. So the power band has certainly changed. Not to mention stock Zs have been dynoed at over 350 wheel horsepower. So Nissan might be sandbagging a little bit. To get the true power out of this thing, you got to rev it out. But when you do five and then 5,500 RPM, it really starts to go. The brakes they've installed are really nice. They offer three levels of brakes. These are the highest, the competition ones. The pedal feel is really good. It doesn't grab too much too early. You don't have to go too deep into the firewall like we did with the MC20. This is just right. This does a good job of slowing this somewhat heavy car down. That's not Z1's fault. That's Nissan's fault. The car is just kind of heavy. Tires are sticky. This thing feels very planted in the corners with some exceptions, which we'll get to in a moment. And I love the way the shifter feels. It's really crisp. Takes a little bit of effort. It's not too light. Really, really good. 6,500 RPM, it really starts steaming. Go to four. This is a fast car. I'm going to slow down a little bit because it's not all rosy. You may have heard on some of the corners a slight scraping sound. And that could be coming from two different sources that I've noticed. One is that the car is just too low and the carbon splitter in the front rubs in places I would not expect. Driveways have been a problem. Even going out of them with a very aggressive angle, it's been really hard to keep that carbon lip from touching the ground. The suspension is stiff. I drove it across Los Angeles the other night on surface streets and it's really stiff. But LA has some of the worst roads. It's not really a fair place to judge. This car was built in Georgia where I can attest that the tarmac tends to be a lot smoother. However, when you get up into the canyons where the road is basically smooth, there is a problem that has revealed itself. In corners or even on straightaways when there is the slightest depression in the road, I mean really almost imperceptible to the eye, there is a scraping that's happening. Compression. You hear that? Did you hear that? I'm pretty sure the front tires are rubbing. So the car's a little bit too low or the tires are a little bit too big or offset too much. But it's not like these are big, heavy compressions we're hitting, you know, close to bump stops. It feels like I'm only one inch into the travel that the car has and I'm hearing and smelling this sound. So that's not very good. Sure, the wheels and tires look amazing. They fill out the arches fantastically. I've gotten a lot of thumbs up. I think this car looks amazing. Looks great. But if we're scraping tire going through small dips in the road, who cares? And what's strange about the suspension is that those small depressions in the road cause it to scrape, which makes me think that the front end is moving too much. Maybe it's too soft. But then when you go around these corners, the back feels super stiff. Feels like there's very little spring movement whatsoever. I've driven so many cars on this exact road. Hypercars, supercars, modified cars. The number of times I've had something scrape the tires or the nose, two maybe. I know this car has good coilovers. They're from Fuel Suspension. Fuel makes great stuff. And this thing has camber arms and toe control arms. They have put in a lot of hardware to tell the wheels where they want to be through the travel of the shock. Just needs a little bit of refinement, I think. But then I got to a stop sign where I was reminded of another problem. I'm going to pull away from the stop sign. I'm in normal mode. I'm not in sport mode because sport mode turns the auto rev match on, which I don't want. Let's see if it does the thing. Barely above idle. Accelerating, accelerating, accelerating, accelerating, accelerating, accelerating. We just went from seven miles per hour to 33 miles per hour near red line. And I barely changed the pressure on the gas pedal above idle just to pull away. I did not add more throttle. I will say that again. I was not adding throttle to make the car accelerate. The car was just accelerating on its own. This has happened every day I've driven this car. It's happened in a variety of weather conditions. Daytime, nighttime. That doesn't matter, of course. The first time it revealed itself was actually so aggressive. I pulled away from a stop sign in the evening. The tires were cold. The engine was actually kind of cold. I'd just been at dinner. And 90 degree turn, I pulled away as I would in any other car driving normally. I was not trying to have a good time. And the car accelerated and spun up the rear wheels and actually got wheel spin. So what that tells me is the throttle mapping is just set to aggressive early in the pedal position. We know that some car companies do this when you turn on sport mode, they'll make the throttle response really aggressive. So instead of adding 10% pedal and you get 10% throttle, you add 10% pedal and you get 15 or 20% throttle. It seems like that is what has happened here. I asked a friend of mine who's a tuner. I'm not gonna name them, but they work for a very reputable company. I said, what would make the car do this? Their theory was, it's probably how the tuner at Z1 set it up because it makes the car seem exciting. But it can be fixed. It can be programmed out. I would recommend they do that because it makes the car frankly feel unpredictable. It's a little bit like Bruce Banner and the Hulk, but the Hulk shows up when Bruce is not angry. He's just trying to pull away from a stop sign with a coffee. For the money you're paying, refinement should come standard. And it's a shame because in the right condition, when you're already going fast and you're in the meat of the throttle and the rev range, this car is fun. I mean, obviously it makes a lot of power. The torque curve is good. It's strange. It's like the tip in is bad, but then once you get past that awkward stage of RPM puberty, it's good. It's got fun turbo sounds when you let off. You get that exciting surge of turbo, like you do when a wave picks you up. Different from an NA motor, different from a supercharged motor. You know, it's pretty responsive, but you do have to get up in the rev range to spool those things up. And as far as I know, they're staying pretty cool. Our engine temps, 190, no problem. Diff temp, no problem. Oil temp, no problem. And you can carry a lot of speed. I mean, this thing feels light. It feels nimble. It is a good time. There's no steering feel, but it's light and nimble. And the grip from the Advanz is good. Not a ton of feedback. I had a tiny, tiny bit of slip back there and nothing presented itself to tell me that was going to happen. That was kind of like a shelf. We had it and we didn't. Part of that might be the steering feel, which there's very, very little of. These seats are really good. These are great. And they've been very comfortable on the highway too. This is a nicely shaped Recaro. But when the road goes from perfect to very slightly imperfect, problems start to reveal themselves. To paraphrase your local ayahuasca shaman, set and setting is important. Randy Popest drove this car on a track and said the shock damping was so good, he was struggling to come up with notes to give to Z1. So perhaps my issue with this car, echoed by Matt when he drove it, are more due to the roads of Southern California than the suspension setup itself. But the price requires your love of Nissan to be stronger than Carlos Ghosn's cello case. $35,000 on top of a Z can buy you a new Corvette, a near new Porsche, or a well-optioned M2 or M3 competition. But 600R shoppers don't want the common answer. They want to stand out. They love the big power turbo experience. And for them, the only question is, can you manual swap a Nismo for less than $35,000? Maybe. And don't forget, always fight your tickets. Go to offtherecord.com slash TST for 10% off all legal services from Off the Record.