EDGED WEAPONS

ONE IS A SAMURAI SWORD, THE OTHER MORE OF A CARVING KNIFE. COMMON DENOMINATOR? BOTH SHINE WITH REAL DRIVER APPEAL

- CAMERON KIRBY

FOR A TIME, this comparison test looked impossible: a new, modern Nissan Z facing down a reborn Toyota Supra. But here I am, standing in front of both cars, resplendent in their respective yellow hues, turbocharged six-cylinder engines humming at idle, having just demolished a challenging mountain road. What was once thought impossible wasn’t due to logistics or a world-altering health crisis, but rather because neither model seemed fated to even exist. Until relatively recently, the tea leaves of future product planning appeared to tell us that both legendary nameplates Fairlady Z and Supra would be confined to the history books, mortal coils sufficiently shuffled. Life without the Supra had begun to feel normal, the fourth-generation cult hero A80 having ceased production before the start of the new millennium. Meanwhile, Our Fairlady of Fun’s sixth Z34 generation became one of the oldest models you could buy, staying on sale fore more than a decade. Its survival beyond the 370Z was tenuous though, and by the mid-2010s it looked like the end of the line was approaching for the fabled Z car, with five decades of royal sports car lineage seeming without an heir.

It was generally accepted that a replacement for the 370Z just wouldn’t happen. Tightening fuel efficiency standards, Nissan’s well documented fiduciary issues and a seeming lack of market demand for two-door sports cars had everyone assuming a seventh-gen Fairlady would live only in the too-hard basket. But survival is the antithesis of doom, and survive the Z did. Four years after we first heard it was in development it’s finally here and ticking all the right boxes.