On Father’s Day morning I fulfilled the car-dad stereotype by going for a solo drive to get some coffee at the local “car guys” spot. Behind the wheel of the new 2024 Nissan Z NISMO, I felt like the coolest guy in town. Fully expecting the Z to draw some attention upon my arrival, it quickly became apparent I had forgotten about Caffeine and Carburetors, one of Connecticut’s biggest car shows, and my look-at-me ego deflated as I parked next to a Bugatti Veyron. Talk about making the new Z seem not-so-special. Thing is, the Z NISMO does feel special, though not necessarily in ways that are conducive to it being enjoyable all the time. Let me explain.

The new Z takes the bones of its predecessor and thrusts the model’s mantra into modern times. It doesn’t feel so much like the 370Z that the sensation is perpetually there, but every so often you’re reminded of its roots. The platform’s refinements have paid dividends; the old Z was never this willing to just mesh with traffic and maintain a leisurely pace or settle into a highway cruise. And then you hit a pothole or stretch of bad roadway and are reminded of the NISMO’s biggest faults, and why the standard, non-NISMO trim might just be the better choice for normal street duty.

Put simply, the Z NISMO is too stiffly sprung for it to be a wholly enjoyable product on the street. It slams into the bump stops over larger impacts, chatters your teeth over smaller ones, and occasionally bangs your head into the roof. I’m not alone in finding the NISMO to be a bit much for road use: Car and Driver recently reviewed the Z NISMO and had the same feelings, saying the “stiffness becomes tiresome” and the “tight body control […] shakes you silly.” Given, this C&D notes these complaints while also complimenting the NISMO’s on-track performance, but we doubt these cars will be driven on the track all that much in the real world. Further, the $68,280 as-tested price puts it in the territory of cars much better suited to track work, or much less expensive cars with a lot of money left over for actually affording to go to track days and pay for the upkeep required after partaking in them.

“Where we’re going, we don’t need roads,” Doc Brown famously said. And for the 2024 Nissan Z NISMO, we don’t need roads to truly love it; no, to actually enjoy the Z NISMO the way it should be enjoyed, we (and buyers) need tracks. On the street, at least on the poorly maintained tarmac of the Northeast, the NISMO is just too harsh to love. It’s bouncy, boomy, and brutal when driven like a normal car.

Of course, light the torch on smoother surfaces and the NISMO is quite a bit different and substantially more enjoyable. The front end darts to exactly where you want it to go with a tiny movement of the steering wheel, and with the transmission being worked via paddle shifters, it’s a fine dance partner on a tight, winding back road. The Z NISMO is an appropriate size for this kind of use, and has an appropriate (read: not useless, needlessly overkill amount) of power. There’s a lot of fun to be had should you avoid anything larger than the smallest of frost heaves.

Then again, as good as it is, the NISMO’s 9-speed automatic transmission still occasionally feels like it can’t get out of its own way. A manual isn’t for everybody (traffic, physical limitations, and so on are totally acceptable reasons), but it would benefit greatly from one. While Nissan says that they can’t comment on future products, we’ll say that selling this car without a shift-it-yourself option is borderline criminal. Nobody is making comparisons with a Z-car against Porsche’s “if you want to go as fast as possible on track, the automatic option is the fastest” mindset, so why not prioritize fun? Perhaps the automatic just for the sake of quoting faster 0-60 times, or Nissan is instead planning to embody Porsche’s other mindset: “Make them wait for the one they want (in this case a 6-speed stick) and you can charge whatever you want.”

Regardless of the transmission, the Z NISMO isn’t slow; on the contrary, it’s properly quick, especially once the engine really gets going. It still sounds entirely like a VQ engine, so those who loathe the howl need not apply as it never goes away, but it hustles the Z fairly well when at full chat. Sadly it’s hard to really enjoy that as the seats are woefully uncomfortable in any situation except full-on hooning; any added bit of adjustability would be welcome here. I was more uncomfortable in the Z’s driver seat after a half hour than I was after almost eight hours in the driver seat of the Toyota GR86.

The sad truth is that it’s hard to justify the Z NISMO’s ~$13k price delta over the $53k Z Performance if the vehicle will be driven primarily on the street. The NISMO treatment does look pretty great, and Car and Driver did say that what comes as detriments on the street plays much to the NISMO’s benefits on the track, but we didn’t have the pleasure of testing the car that way. The catch is that at the NISMO’s price point, there are other cars that do track work just as well while also being more comfortable and more pleasurable to drive on the street. You really have to love the Z nameplate to want this car.

As-is, the Z NISMO is best left for those who are fortunate enough to live in locales with excellent, or at least extremely good, pavement conditions or those who do for some reason want the highest-performing Nissan Z as their track vehicle. For the latter it could conceivably be quite good, but as a street-going performance car, the money you have to pony up for a Z NISMO money is best spent elsewhere until the model gets multi-mode suspension and/or (ideally and) a manual gearbox. To be clear: I do truly like the Z NISMO’s bones, and love that it exists at all, and I spent an inordinate amount of time taking in its stunning design (from the back at least). But this isn’t an issue of the Z NISMO being half-baked; it’s an issue of going ten steps too far. Reel it back, and there’s a fantastic car to play with here. Just don’t expect it to be the ideal Cars & Coffee vehicle.

Yay

• Looks great, especially from the back and rear 3/4
• The right size for a sports car
• Acts the way you want a NISMO product to when you want it to
• Doesn’t feel like computers control the experience

Nay

• Excessively stiff and harsh ride
• Pricing puts it in the territory of substantial competition
• Engine is lazy at the bottom of the RPM range
• Gearbox isn’t as responsive as we’d like for an automatic tasked with NISMO expectations

The Takeaway

As fun as the 2024 Nissan Z NISMO is in the right conditions, its ride quality and performance don’t line up with its price, meaning that perceived exclusivity, top-dog Z-car status, and some kind of brand loyalty or nameplate nostalgia have to the driving factors in purchasing this car for anything but track use.