I've looked at various Porsche, BMW, Lotus and Mercedes models but eventually settled on a Nissan 370Z Black Edition as the perfect all weather vehicle to compliment the VX.
After a week of it sitting on my driveway awaiting the registration documents
I have finally been able to drive it yesterday evening and today.First things first, the interior is just lovely, great driving position, the media system and bose speakers are tremendous and the seats are very comfortable. It really decieves you into thinking it's going to be a quiet refined place to sit when in fact it made me feel right at home as the you can hear the mechanical thunk of the gearbox and while wind noise is much less than in the VX, the road noise is far more pronounced from the 19in 245 fronts and 275 rear tyres. It really does feel like a big coupe version of the VX in terms of the noises you experience even down to the exhaust note being a bit dissapointing as standard, there are no rattles though which is a nice novelty!
Also similar to the VX are the exterior looks, just in the way that both the 370 and VX both look okay in photos, but in the flesh they look drop dead gorgeous imo. In fact it's the looks that pretty much sold me on the 370 over a similarly priced Cayman S, walking towards the 370 gives me the same buzz as the VX, whereas the Cayman just looks a bit bland by comparison.
Onto the driving experience, it seems a lot wider than it actually is which made me quite nervous at first and I think if it were any bigger it would be difficult to enjoy many of the tighter roads on the Isle of Man. At low speeds it feels really really slow and the clutch/gearbox feel a bit cumbersome when tootling around town. Once out on the open road though it is a completely different beast, it just goes and goes, there is so much torque that 3rd, 4th and 5th gear are pretty much interchangeable, whereas overtaking in the VX above 70mph can be a bit iffy, in this it is a piece of cake. It is also a lot more precise than I was expecting, turn in is very sharp and while the feedback is obviously not as good as the VX the steering still feels reasuringly weighty. The grip is just astonishing, it just seems to stick regardless of speed and with practically zero body roll it gives you immense confidence.
Lastly a quick word on the synchro rev control, I like to blip the throttle on downchanges in the VX but I am by no means a professional, this system however is just superb. Makes driving fast so much easier and allows you to really concentrate on your braking a lines. I think with a proper sports exhaust this could be one of the most addictive gizmos I've ever experienced.
Anyway enough with the jabbering, here's a couple of pics:
I like the fact that they look different to a lot of other cars too
Steve
