New Nissan Z Hits 186 MPH With Just a Few Mods
The stock car is limited to 155 mph, but a lightly modified Z can do much, much more.
Plenty of cars' true top-speed potential is masked by electronic speed-limiting trickery, and the new Nissan Z is no exception. On paper, it's only good for 155 mph, but test results published Wednesday by Japanese tuners—supervised unofficially by the car's intrigued chief engineer Hiroshi Tamura—proved it's capable of far more. The lightly modified Z that the group tested was able to reach a hair over 300 km/h, or just about 186 mph.
The modifications to the Z in the video are limited to a new muffler, at least initially. If you've heard the exhaust note of a new Z, that's a good addition. The car is whisper quiet from the factory. The tuners, GReddy, claim this new muffler also adds 10 horsepower, which probably didn't do much in terms of increasing the car's top speed.
After the run in the mostly stock Z is complete, a tune is put on the car's 3.0-liter twin-turbocharged V6, the VR30DDTT. It cranks up the boost and allows the car to make around 473 hp, although it's unclear if that's an adjusted figure representing crank horsepower or a wheel horsepower figure. If it's a wheel horsepower figure, that Z is probably making more than 500 horsepower at the crank with just a tune and a muffler.
This extra power does not do much to increase the car's top speed. It appears to be able to reach its 300 km/h peak a bit easier but doesn't accelerate much further beyond that. In regular driving that much extra power would be very noticeable, though.
The result of uncorking this car should really not be surprising and it speaks to how capable the Z really is despite being a heavy refresh. As I said after I drove the car, there's a series of relatively minor modifications that could turn the Z from the sort of relaxed, quiet GT car it ended up being into something truly great. A new muffler, a tune, and other things like a lighter flywheel and retuned suspension would turn it into a completely different animal. Even taking just a few of these steps, as seen above, makes a huge difference.
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