The drive from Sacramento to Las Vegas with the 370z was like winning the lottery.  I’m not kidding.  Getting the opportunity to drive these cars on an extended trip like this is a once in a life time experience (well hopefully not.)

I was able to drive the final leg all the way from Bakersfield to Las Vegas.  I have never been more impressed with a STOCK car in my entire life.  This car is amazing!  The improvements over the out-going model are almost too vast to describe here, but I’ll give it my best.

Exterior styling: While quite a few people feel that the new car has some strange styling ques the design really grows on you one you spend some time on it.  I spent four days with the car doing everything from detailing them to driving them through the desert with ZCG’s finest creations and I have fallen in love with the way it looks.  It is definitely a Z.

Interior: Improvements in this department are vast.  All of the materials are top notch quality and the arrangement of the buttons and switches has been improved over the 350z.  I wasn’t too big of a fan of the seats in the standard model (I drove the blue 370z the 300 miles from Bakersfield to Las Vegas) but the other people on the drive had no complaints.  The Premium Edition interior was also very impressive with it’s power leather seats and full navigation system.  Very nice indeed.

Engine: The new VQ is the best normally aspirated V6 Nissan has ever produced, hands down.  There is torque everywhere with this thing!!  With the rev limit still up at 7,500 rpm so there is plenty of room to play around the rpm range while changing gears as little as possible if you desire.  Yes please…

Drivetrain: This is my favorite part of the entire package.  They have modified the electronics in the car to recognize what gear you are in at any time.  This allows the ecu to be able to rev match you automatically no matter what gear you select, and it works on up shifts too!  NO MORE MISSED THROTTLE BLIPS, EVER.  The only way to miss a shift now is if you don’t engage the shifter all the way.
In other words if you are at 60mph and you want to go from 5th to 4th gear you just need to disengage the clutch and start to move the shifter  and the engine will adjust it’s RPM to match the selected gear and it will hold it there as long as you have your foot on the clutch.  You can even keep the clutch in while shifting from gear to gear and the engine RPM will dance around the tach like Circ de Soleil.  Wicked.

If you have any specific questions about the car feel free to leave a comment of shoot us an email and I will add whatever information I can get my hands on.  Now without further delay here are some more pictures from our adventures on the Follow The Nissan Z tour to Las Vegas and Back.

There are more photos after clicking the read more link and always click on the pictures for larger.