Nissan Z
The Manual Z Nismo Is a Homecoming
Built to chase lap times and beaten at them, the Nismo returns with a six-speed manual — slower on paper, and the panel calls it the best Z yet.
For two years the Z Nismo answered the wrong question. Auto-only, it was sold as a lap-time weapon — then both the Dark Horse and the manual M2 beat it around a track, and the case collapsed. The 2027 car answers differently. It arrives with a six-speed manual, a little slower, and across four reviews the verdict turns unanimous and warm.
The Argument That Collapsed
TheSmokingTire has the receipts. When the Nismo launched auto-only, the pitch was lap times — and then, as he puts it, "both the Dark Horse and the M2 manual beat it around the track, which pretty much eliminated that argument." He had asked Nissan for a stick two years earlier. Now it exists, the car gets reframed around "driving enjoyment and fizz," and the conclusion he draws is that the company was finally right to stop counting seconds.
Everything Retuned
The fix runs deeper than a third pedal. TheTopher, who drove the old Performance car back-to-back with the new Nismo, found a shifter finally free of the gruffness that had dogged every Z since the 350Z — tighter, crisper, less play in the gates. Nissan retuned the steering, the dampers, the throttle map and the brakes, and baffled the fuel tank that used to starve on track. The stick, in other words, is no box-check; it is the car rebuilt around the way enthusiasts always wanted to drive it — enough that he rates the Nismo, for the first time, above the Supra.
Slower, and Glad
No one on this slate pretends the manual is the quick way around. The Fast Lane Car says it plainly — for ultimate lap times, the automatic still wins — and then spends a soaking-wet Sonoma session not caring, because the manual is where the joy lives. The buckets hold, the GT-R brakes haul it down hard, the chassis stays playful with the traction aids on. The one honest cloud: the twin-turbo V6 "audibly is not nearly as interesting" than the inline-sixes in the M2 and Supra. A car this redeemed deserves a better voice — though it plainly does not need one to win the day.
Buy One Anyway
Redline Reviews reads the spec sheet with clear eyes: the software is dated, there is no 360 camera, the Nismo loses heated seats, and the steering "still needs a little bit more heft." None of it stops the recommendation. The Z already outsold the Supra last year, and with Toyota's coupe in its final season, this is the last analog sports car of its kind still arriving new on a showroom floor. The verdict lands as encouragement, not caution — get one while the getting is good.
It's analog feeling. It's small and dense and compact, and the inputs are fabulous.
with the Supra kind of out of the picture going forward, this might be the new king in class
if you want the ultimate in track car, the automatic is probably still the way to go
go out and buy one of these while you still can
The reviewers, side by side
4 reviewers. 3 questions. Where the arguments overlap and where they diverge.
Slower, and Finally Right
Here is the surprise worth sitting with: four reviewers, separately, concede the automatic is quicker and then tell buyers to skip it. That unanimity is the story. The car that once chased lap times and lost has stopped chasing — and in stopping, found the thing a Z was always supposed to be: communicative, light on its feet, alive under the hand. The lone unfinished note is literal, the muted exhaust on the manual. Everything else reads as sunlight after a long grey spell.
The fastest Z is the automatic. The best one is the stick — and the whole panel finally agrees.