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Tamura San Hooning around in a Gun Metallic Z
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Yep!
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That should be a lot of fun.
Are you planning to get stickier tires or any other upgrades to improve performance?
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Na the potenzas RE050 on the performance I think will be fine for my purposes
In this video you get a good look at the steering wheel and it is apparent that the shape of the wheel (the cross-section) is not the least bit ergonomic. It is horrible in fact. At 1:15 you see it very well. In cross-section, the steering wheel is flat at some locations on the circumference and has a tight radius of curvature at other locations on the circumference. The location where the radius of curvature is tightest is at the top and facing mostly toward the driver but a little higher. This is the location where the driver's palms naturally fall to the wheel, and as such this is the location where the cross-section should be flat. The way it is designed makes not sense at all. The person who is responsible for this most likely was someone in an executive position with final say but who likely had little to do with the engineering of the car. It is aggravating to me to think that I would buy a new car and have to deal with something like this.
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According to interviews with Nissan designers, the steering wheel design is based on the GT-R steering wheel. The GT-R design was very likely designed with input from the drivers of their GT racing series cars.
I have actually sat in this car and put my hands on the wheel. It didn't feel unnatural to me, but personal opinion counts for a lot when buying a car.
I just spent a little bit of time looking closely at a whole bunch of pictures of the GT-R steering wheel. You could also have done this. There is some similarity, but they aren't the same at all. The steering wheel on the new Z is a sort of greatly exaggerated incarnation of the GT-R steering wheel. And I looked as some pictures of the Nismo GT-R wheel, which is covered with synthetic suede, and it does not have this effect at all. It is very obviously round in cross-section just as it should be. You hypothesized that the GT-R wheel was designed with input from drivers of Nissan GT racing cars. Even if that were true, it would not be a reason for why either the GT-R or the new Z should used that same wheel. But I doubt that it is true at all, and even if someone within Nissan said this, it would not mean much. And if it is true, the question that then begs to be asked is why that racing steering wheel would have been copied for the GT-R and later the new Z, but not for the Nismo GT-R. This would be a very peculiar thing, and it probably means that the steering wheel in the GT-R was not actually designed to be like the steering wheel in Nissan racing cars. I think it is a fairly safe bet that racing car drivers would not tolerate a steering wheel with cross-section shape like the one we see in the new Z. This is something that was cooked by someone who was trying too hard to do something original and clever and who completely lost sight of functionality. It is very apparent from several pictures and from this video that the part of the wheel where cross-section radius of curvature is smallest (the curvature is least flat) is the part where the palms of the driver's hands fall naturally to the wheel, whenever the driver places his hands on the 12 o'clock position of the wheel. In the past I have driven other cars that were similar to this, that had a steering wheel that was supposed to be a "kidney-shaped" wheel, and it was counter to comfort. It just didn't make any sense, and it isn't surprising that a car manufacturer would do something that very obviously is counter to what makes sense, because car manufacturers very often do things that are counter to what makes sense. For whatever reason, most owners are silent about this kind of thing even after having the product for years.
Maybe the Nismo GT-R steering wheel is compatible with the new Z steering wheel. If so, this may be the solution, although it will add $$ to the cost of the new vehicle, on top of the "market adjustment" that the dealerships will undoubtedly add on top of MSRP.
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What we learned from seeing the production Nissan Z in person
We recently got the chance to see the new production Nissan Z in person. Nissan let us pop the hood, sit in the car, talk to its chief engineer — everything short of drive it. But despite the lack …
japanesenostalgiccar.com
From the article. Tamura san is the chief engineer for the GT-R and has been one of the driving forces behind the new Z.
"Another brilliant tactile detail can be found in the steering wheel. It’s not the fat tube often equipped in modern sporty cars, but it has an oblong cross-section that is easy to grip and nudges your hands into a comfortable resting angle. Tamura-san says that the shape is very close to, but not quite, that of the steering wheel in an R32 Skyline GT-R. He owns a tuned R32 himself, and hopes that the steering wheel will make many Nissan owners in Japan feel instantly at home when they put their hands on it."
I had read that write-up from that site, back around October or November. It annoyed me, and it still does. It isn't written like an independent review. It is written like something that might have come out of Nissan's marketing department. The "fat tube" often equipped in modern sporty cars is preferred by many people, possibly by the majority but this is impossible to say because to the best of my knowledge no proper, independent survey has ever been made. Yet, that sentence is worded in way that asserts via insinuation that the "fat tube" is inherently inferior. To me, this style of writing is disingenuous. If the person who wrote wanted to assert that the "fat tube" is inherently inferior, which clearly this person did want to assert, he should have said this in a much more direct way. Also, the fact that this author described it as "another brilliant tactile detail" means nothing at all. I could not even begin to count the number of times over the decades I've read some automotive journalist heaping praise on something that some manufacturer did, when it was apparent to intelligent readers that is was simply marketing spiel disseminated through an automotive journalist. The appearance of independent assessment is phony, and the reasons for this have been well documented numerous times over the years.What we learned from seeing the production Nissan Z in person
We recently got the chance to see the new production Nissan Z in person. Nissan let us pop the hood, sit in the car, talk to its chief engineer — everything short of drive it. But despite the lack …
From the article. Tamura san is the chief engineer for the GT-R and has been one of the driving forces behind the new Z.
"Another brilliant tactile detail can be found in the steering wheel. It’s not the fat tube often equipped in modern sporty cars, but it has an oblong cross-section that is easy to grip and nudges your hands into a comfortable resting angle. Tamura-san says that the shape is very close to, but not quite, that of the steering wheel in an R32 Skyline GT-R. He owns a tuned R32 himself, and hopes that the steering wheel will make many Nissan owners in Japan feel instantly at home when they put their hands on it."
I have not had the opportunity to sit in the car and grasp the wheel. But as I said, I have driven various cars over the years that had steering wheels that were similarly designed, and every single one of them was an abomination as far as I am concerned. And I have never once detected anything the least bit undesirable about the simple "fat tube" steering wheel. To say it more plainly, every "fat tube" steering wheel I have ever gripped was vastly superior to every steering wheel I have ever gripped that was not a "fat tube".
There just isn't any possible way that this steering wheel is "easy to grip", and it is even less likely that it "nudges your hands into a comfortable resting angle." It is obvious at a glance that there is no possible way that any of this is true, because the pointy part of the wheel at the 12 o'clock position is aimed directly at the driver's shoulders. This is obvious in two of the pictures in that write-up. This is exactly where the driver's palms naturally fall to the wheel, when the hands are placed at or near the 12 o'clock position. I think I was told when I took driver's ed a very long time ago not to rest my hands there, and to keep them at something like 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock, but I don't think that advice applies to a car with a floor (or center console) mounted shifter. My right hand is mostly about shifting or preparedness to shift, and in order to accommodate tight turns at low speed to either right or left, I sometimes like to place my left hand at the 12 o'clock position. And in between shifts I do the same with my right hand. My palms fall directly to the part of the wheel that faces to my shoulders, maybe a little higher, and it seems entirely obvious to me that this is the part where the wheel should be flat in cross-section, not pointy. Or it can simply be round, which works just as well. But what does not work is for this part of the wheel, facing toward the driver's head or shoulders, to be pointy while slight further back toward the windshield it is flat. In order for me to rest my palms on the flat part, I would have to raise my elbows and push my wrists forward, rotating my hands forward into a positions that is obviously not going to be the least bit comfortable. "Easy to grip" is the opposite of the truth, and the same goes for "nudges your hands into a comfortable resting angle". It just doesn't add up. But when did you ever see a car where the engineers or the designers had not done at least one thing that was so dumb that try as you might you could not comprehend how that thing, whatever it was, had made it into production?
I have very mixed feelings about this car, the same as I do with most any other car. I almost never use the word "brilliant", but I might with this car in reference to the twin turbos, the clutch, the carbon fiber drive shaft, and the limited slip differential. I might also use the word "brilliant" in reference to everything I see in the interior, with the single exception of the cross-section shape of that steering wheel. It should have been the same fat tube that is used in most modern sports cars. There is no doubt in my mind that if I buy this car I will despise this steering wheel from the minute I lay hands on it literally, and will immediately begin to try and figure out the best way to rectify something that no one who has just purchased a brand new expensive car should have to fuss with.
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