Your regular road user doesn't tend to associate the Nissan brand with growling, two-seater, rear-wheel-drive performance cars. We are too busy, in the main, associating them with sterling repmobiles, such as the Primera and the Almera, or fizzy urban errand-runners like the Micra. Either that or we think of a Nissan as the doubtfully legal minicab that turns up late at night, has no interior doorhandles and a boot-lid held down with string. What we are forgetting at such moments is the history of the Z-car - an oversight for which we can be excused, since most of the ebullient phases in that history have happened on roads other than our own.
Suffice to say that in Japan, the name Z-car has nothing to do with Bert Lynch and the Newtown plod, but rather summons effortlessly to mind a legacy of uncompromising sports-car production stretching back through four generations of vehicle across 34 years.
Thus, as Nissan launches this fifth-generation Z-car, the 350Z, it can duly make boastful claims about "the return of a legend", and we can equally duly note the appearance in the UK of the first new, Tarmac- depleting Nissan Z since the 300ZX was withdrawn in 1994, knackered chiefly by changes in the regulations on emissions.
Touchingly stinking up the environment only as much as it is allowed to, the 350Z is already a bestseller in Japan and North America and one quickly learns why. It has a low, wide, gravel-hugging shape and a body that ends almost immediately after the front wheels and not far behind the rear ones, in the most hallowed sports-car configuration.
To my eyes, the big aluminium doorhandles have too much in common with mismounted lavatory paper dispensers to come off as a style classic. (And the interior handles, the ones your minicab driver will break off, are still stranger, having a weird shuttlecock shape.) But overall, to look at, the 350Z has got, dare one say it, a touch of the Aston Martins about it, though, cheeringly, it costs about as much as an Aston Martin's hubcaps.
Also it has been arranged to seat its two occupants bang in the middle of the car, as measured from front to back, thus enabling them to appreciate in full, glorious stereo, via their feet and buttocks, the vibrations coming off the axles. (Sports-car drivers get off on this kind of thing.) And it is, accordingly, a real sensation to drive, a treat for the nerve endings, which get jostled and re-sorted by every rev and pothole. The gear shifts are tight and short, and possibly only the tarmac itself goes round the corners as smoothly as the 350X. A direct hit to the car's underside by a drain-launched torpedo would most likely loosen its grip on the road, but only briefly.
It sounds great, too, the exhaust having been tuned to emit a heckle-raising yowl. Obviously purists are going to wish the 3.5-litre V6 engine was behind them, breathing down the backs of their necks, rather than barking at the road from under the bonnet. But there is no arguing with the low, fat chord the engine plays at start-up, nor the gleeful roar it lets out as it pings you into the future and/or a nearby tree.
The boot is a tall hatchback, opening on a parcel space in which you could stow almost anything, as long as it's flat and triangular and not much wider than you are. The interior, meanwhile, is sensible and understated - unless you opt for the orange leather, that is, in which case it's like sitting in a juicer. For some reason the handbrake is so far over it's almost in your passenger's lap, which could be embarrassing during a hill start. But both of you benefit from Nissan's enlightened approach to sports-car seating.
You, the driver, get a waist-hugging, bottom-clamping rally seat to keep you alert and road-ready as you go about your essential business of terrifying squirrels. Your passenger gets a spongier, Pullman version, the better to relax in and absorb the less desirable upshots of your squirrel-worrying. In a sports car, a driver's pleasure is often a passenger's trip to the osteopath, so this acknowledgment of different ergonomic needs within the same cockpit is a hugely civilised development.
In another smart move, the main instrument panel is attached to the steering column. Thus when you adjust the steering wheel, you take the instruments up or down with you, which means you don't have to put your head in your lap in order to play "spot the speedo" through the wheel spokes - never an entirely happy piece of contortionism to get involved in at 70mph on a wet motorway.
"It's a bit of a snorter," said the man charged by Nissan with delivering the 350X. His face wore a wistful expression and I sensed that he didn't really want to surrender the keys. I now know how he felt. He returns for the keys tomorrow and he may be required to use physical intimidation.
