Confirmed: Nissan Shows Upcoming Z-Car With Manual Transmission

Nissan has issued another teaser for the impending 400Z with clear intent to alleviate any confusion created by the previous marketing materials. We said it looked like the company planned on offering the sports coupe with a manual transmission and are required to revise our claim. It’s now blatantly obvious that Nissan is planning on producing be-clutched examples. We can only assume that Nissan’s marketing department noticed that everyone had started to catch onto the possibility of there being a manual option in its last posting and simply decided to remove all doubt.

One can even imagine the video conference where management tells the person editing the clips to throw in a bare shot of the gear selector this time. Nissan knows few customers will actually buy one but that the automotive press can’t help but mention the last of a dying breed. Some of us wake up in a cold sweat nightly, haunted by the knowledge that carefully using two appendages to change gears isn’t something future generations are going to put up with.

Until then, it remains the more engaging option on sporting vehicles. It’s just not particularly practical in an era where less than 20 percent of Americans can actually drive stick. The rest of Nissan’s teaser was devoted to playing a guessing game where listeners attempted to determine which V6 would be used. Will it be the twin-turbo 3.0-liter V6 sourced from the company’s luxury arm? Maybe the 3.8-liter that’s in the GT-R will come into play.

We can’t really say and aren’t planning to use another shadowy teaser to make assertions of items that aren’t spelled out for us. Besides, the manufacturer will be showing us the prototype on September 16th. After living for months in relative isolation to avoid getting coughed on, waiting another week to see a car is going to be a breeze.

https://twitter.com/NissanMotor/status/1303981539534008322

[Image: Nissan]