SPIED: New Nissan Z NISMO Will Be The Fastest Z Yet

In case you’ve missed it, the new Nissan Z is a fantastic analog sports car built for the modern age. We loved the Z so much, not even a flat tire in a snow storm could stop us from enjoying it. Apparently, Nissan doesn’t think this is enough. As such, it appears Nissan is working on a NISMO variant of its new sports car.

This is, frankly, highly unusual. Usually, a brand will let the new car breathe before the fast (or faster, in this case) one comes along. How long was it between the BMW M2 and the M2 CS? Not so here, and we believe this is the new Nissan Z NISMO, spotted testing in the Angeles Crest Forest.

Unfortunately, the above content is really all we have to go on right now. We’ve got one photo from the forums, and one Instagram video. That’s it. However, we have seen this Z car once before, if only briefly. Back then, it was spotted cruising the highways of Arizona. That car also had a similar camo pattern, with only the bumper covered.

Here, we see much the same, just in much more clarity. It appears the nose will be reworked to allow for better cooling and a slight aesthetic update to differentiate this from the current car. Last time, we hypothesized that it was an almost carbon copy of the bumper off of the retro Fairlady Z Customized Proto concept from Tokyo auto salon.

A forum user also pointed out a nice detail, though we’re not sure how they did it given the image quality. The seats in this test car are said to be the Recaro units right out of the previous 370Z. Given the shared architecture between the new Z and the previous car, we wouldn’t be shocked to see that the seats fit right in there.

Then there’s the Instagram clip. We can’t see much more of the car, only that it was up testing with a fleet of other Z models. Perhaps these are a few of the off-the-boat Z cars from last week. Regardless, it’s strange to see the NISMO Z here instead of somewhere more fitting, like the Nurburgring. We’ll keep an eye out for it while we’re up in the LA canyons with our Audi S3 loaner.