Pro Tip
"Driving one myself in professional drifting, it is one of the best chassis you can use.
It has a very short wheel base and wide track which gives a lot of stability."
Chris Forsberg — 2009 Formula Drift Champion, on the 370Z®
Pro Tip
"Car control is really important you have to know how to be able to drift a little bit.
I mean because sometime the car just goes out you gotta bring it back."
Maryeve Dufault — 2011 Nascar Nationwide Series driver"
Pro Tip
"I'm a fan of GT Academy because 25 years ago when I started racing there was nothing like this
and basically this is like a lottery ticket. It's a chance for a kid without any money,
without any racing background to make it in a sport that I'd loved for 25 years."
Boris Said — Two-time winner of the 24 Hours of Daytona
370Z® INTERIOR 360° PANORAMA
Click and drag to rotate
COMPARE VERSIONS
Track Vs. Street
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2009 Z® CupGT Academy Version
Specs:
- Engine: 3.7L V6
- Horsepower: 332 hp
- Torque: 270 lb-ft
- Drivetrain: rear-wheel drive
- Transmission: 6-speed manual
- Racing mods: rollcage, Recaro® pro racer seat, NISMO® rear differential, racing brake pads
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2013 Nissan370Z®
Starting from $33,120* MSRP
Specs:
- Engine: 3.7L V6
- Horsepower: 332 hp
- Torque: 270 lb-ft
- Drivetrain: rear-wheel drive
- Transmission: 6-speed manual or 7-speed automatic
370Z® KEY FEATURES
POWER TO WEIGHT RATIO
MATH THAT'S ACTUALLY EXCITING
It's pretty simple, really - the lighter the car, the faster it goes. The 370Z® has a wicked power-to-weight ratio of 9.87 lb/hp.
Okay, what does that mean exactly? The car weighs in at 3278 pounds. Divide that weight by the number of horses under the hood, 332, and you have the power-to-weight ratio: 9.87lb/hp.
Put simply, for every 9.87 pounds of car, there is one horsepower. Or, to look at it another way, every horse under the hood is pushing 9.87 pounds of Z®. It's a low number, and in this case, the lower the better.
TRANSMISSION
6-SPEEDS, OR 6 WAYS TO SEPARATE THE MEN FROM THE BOYS
Now to get this thing really going, you need to know what you're doing. This 370Z® here has a manual transmission. Any GT Academy drivers that didn't know how to drive a stick shift when they got here had to learn quick, because you need to know exactly when to shift that stick to get the most out of the car.
This particular stick shift has 6 gears. We call it "5 for go, and 1 for going backwards", which doesn't really roll off the tongue, but we're working on that.
What we've also done here is invented something called SynchroRev Matching, which actually makes you a better driver. It automatically tweaks the throttle to the RPMs you'll need going into that next gear, giving you seamless upshifting and downshifting.
Switch the system off if you want to see what you can do without computer assistance.
ENGINE
WE TINKERED. WE TRIED. BUT IN THE END, WE COULDN'T IMPROVE THIS ENGINE. We've been building the Z® for more than 40 years now, and 40 years gives you a lot of time to develop something that is pretty special.
We dropped a 3.7-liter V6 in this latest one. 332 horsepower, 270 lb-ft of torque and all that other stuff you read about engines, it has all that. The point of this engine, the point of this whole car, is that it goes fast. It accelerates fast. It goes around corners fast. It tops out really fast. It even stops fast. So be careful.
BRAKING
IT'S ONE THING TO GO FAST. IT'S QUITE ANOTHER TO STOP THAT WAY.
The bigger the brakes, the quicker you'll stop. It's really that simple. We slapped on the biggest brake rotors a Z® has ever seen – they are 14-inches up front, and they are matched with powerful 4-caliper Nissan brake pads.
The whole set-up is designed to slow you (and the 18" Compomotive aluminum alloy wheels) down in a big hurry, and when you can slow down in a hurry, you can also stay on the gas longer. It only makes sense – the less time you spend slowing down, the more time you can spend going fast. Lap-times go down, and the good times roll.
SUSPENSION
ONE WORD: SPRUNG.
The engineers call it "unsprung weight" – it is the actual weight of the parts of the suspension.
When you reduce unsprung weight, you increase the responsiveness of the suspension. So it's lighter, it's quicker, and it all makes the car go faster. So how did we do it? With a ruthless approach to dead weight. Instead of using conventional materials, the suspension parts are high-strength, light-weight aluminum. (We also actually reduced the weight of stuff like the radio, but that's a different story).
The whole thing is more than just lightweight though. With an underbody V brace and under-hood 3-point strut tower giving it plenty of stiffness, you get a crisp, performance-first ride.
WEIGHT DISTRIBUTION
TOP HEAVY, OR JUNK IN THE TRUNK? TRY NEITHER.
Your average car has a weight distribution of 50 in the front and 50 in the back. The 370Z®, of course, isn't your average car. Its weight is skewed to 53 in the front and 47 in the back, meaning it accelerates faster out of a turn.
At the precise moment the 370Z® driver hits the gas on the way out of a corner, the weight distribution shifts to the back, giving you a nearly perfect 50/50 dynamic weight balance exactly when you need it most.
EYES AND EARS
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY - THINK GAUGES, NOT KEYBOARDS.
These guys are flying in these cars. They don't have time to goggle around when they need to know how fast they are going, how much gas they have left, if the oil temp is high. All this info is laid out right in front of them on a gauge cluster that moves with the steering wheel, and on the nifty set of triple gauges on the dash. That's right, I said nifty.
The 370Z® Cup has a radio, but it's not a regular radio, droning on with sports talk, classic rock and self-help schlock. This radio actually tells you something you want to hear. Scratch that. Something you need to hear. It's a two-way radio, in your helmet, and the guy on the other end of it is your spotter. His job is to tell you where the other cars are, who to draft with, when to pass, when to pit and all sorts of vital information. He's your eyes and he's in your ears. You have to listen to him.
WEIGHT REDUCTION
WE SENT THE 370Z® TO THE FAT FARM. THIS IS WHAT CAME BACK.
Passengers? Where we're going, we don't need passengers. The 370Z® Cup was designed for one thing – to go fast – so we needed to lighten things up, literally.This isn't the kind of ride that needs much in the way of creature comfort, so the first thing we did was pull out the stock Z® front seats and replaced them with just one - a Recaro® Pro Racer performance seat. And the drivers will be strapping in with a Willans 3" 6-point race harness.
So now the passenger seat is gone. Next to go were the interior door panels, center console and even the upholstery on the ceiling. The dash was heavily modified for weight and to accommodate the rollcage.
Finally, we swapped out the stock steering wheel for a lightweight, quick-release wheel built by Racetech.
SAFETY
WE CAN PROTECT YOUR BODY.
YOUR NERVES ON THE OTHER HAND...
Have rollcage, will travel. We tapped RJN Motorsports out of England to develop a rollcage for the 370Z® Cup. They built a custom frame out of 45mm diameter CDS (cold drawn mild steel) tubing that is 2.5mm thick. This setup doesn't just protect the driver in the unlikely event of a rollover – it's also there to help keep driver and cabin intact in a collision with another vehicle. Or with the wall.
Next up, we plumbed in fire extinguishers with nozzles pointing at the engine bay, the fuel tank, and the driver himself. Pull cables, both inside and out, can be engaged if things start to get hot. While we were at it, we wired up the cockpit with a kill-switch for the battery.
