Thread: 350Z Opinions and Much More

I made a comment in a Members Rides thread that sparked some off topic discussion so the posts have been moved here.

This is the original post with a link to the original thread (blue arrow).

Along with your snot-nosed bias and bad manners, Ben. Why feeling the need to slam someone's ride? Not cool. Also spoken out of true ignorance by an obvious non-Z owner. If you ever logged some serious miles behind the wheel of one, you'd either a) change your tune, or b) remain clueless. They're great driver's cars, good balance and just pure fun to drive hard.

Big Ben, that's an excellent Z, and props for RAYS - by far the best looking, best choice wheels I still have seen on any Z or G.

Yes Biased Ben, I like 350Z's a lot :P



And I love my G Coupe, too :PPPPPPPPPPPPPP

More power to those who enjoy the 350Z. It's just not for me. Maybe I would change my mind after logging many miles. I've only test driven one, once. My first impression of the S2000 was not great either but after more rides I changed my mind.

Didn't mean to offend anyone. We all have our opinions here. Mine doesn't carry any more weight than yours. So no need to feel threatened.

don't change your mind at all the 350z is pure and simple not all it is cracked up to be. The 370z is a different story but the 350 is a joke. Slow, fat and ugly all three characteristics I would not want any car I owned to have. They are coming down in price a lot now a days though but if you have a sr20 turbo powered car you do not want to ever sit foot in an early gen z33. -- just saying

Then don't post offensive remarks about someone's car, duh. "If you don't have anything nice to say"...you know the rest.


No, yours carries a lot less weight than mine in this particular instance, simply because it is uninformed vs. well-informed. Opinions based on more information and quality information count more, sorry.

Not ones based on a test drive vs. thousands of miles of driving one under varying conditions, tracking it 1000+ miles. Have you ever even driven a 510? One car you'd buy, the other you would toss, but where is this expertise coming from? Yes, I have also driven 510's, bone stock and highly modified, and honestly in stock trim they are pretty horrible, much like a bone stock B13, but with investment and time they are great little cars.

What really impressed me with the 350Z is it is a car you can take off the lot brand new, and in a very short time become quite comfortable driving it very aggressively, w/o any mods. The NISMO edition, even more so. It has its flaws like any car, but Nissan did a great job making a true sports car you could just buy and drive w/o more investment in $$$ for quite some time. It sucks gas (and 91 or higher at that), goes through brakes and tires fast, makes a lot of noise inside and out (subjective whether that's good or bad), but so do most true sports cars.

People can argue its cost, but fact is relative to its competition when new, nothing touched it in a 2-seater at that price point in 2003. Comparing it 7 years later to everything else introduced would be kind of irrelevant, kind of like arguing the merits of a B13 vs. an STi. People tend to forget that close to 300 chp NA in a 3.5 liter V6 was really something special at that time, now that 300 hp is the low water mark for high performance cars.

Handling, I like to think I have a pretty good handling B13, but honestly, I could pretty easily best it around it on the track in the Z33 when it had no mods at all - add better brakes, no contest. Go ahead and even out the power to weight, it does not matter - you can close that gap but not completely, the Z had near perfect 50/50 F/R weight, very good control in drifting and throttle steer, and at least the non-tarted-up editions like mine were 3100 lbs, not too bad all things considered. Anyone saying their B13 will slay any Z is definitely focused on straight line speed. Track kill stories, again, sure I have bested Z's but that wasn't car vs. car, it was driving. You want a real hoot, go to an all-Z track event and see how widely varying the results are with 25-30 people driving essentially the same car. I have. I'd start near the front of each run group, drive moderately, then start lapping the back-markers in 3-4 laps at NHMS. I managed to keep the not-so-track-friendly stock non-Brembo brakes together for over 200 miles that day, too.

Argue the $$$, it's still a good buy used, if not abused. Cost comparisons seem to be conveniently forgetting the fact that total cost is based today on getting your nearly 20 year old B13 cheap (how much was a 6-7 year old B13 in 1997?) and adding even more power to it again on the cheap, compared to a VQ35DE. But also remember just to start, you have to close a gap of about 140-150 hp and +100 ft-lbs of torque. Then try to match that NA, all linear from 2000 to 7000 rpm, too...good luck. Then drop another $5k on suspension and power add-ons on a Z, again good luck.

But don't take my word for it, please...or does your opinion on the car also "carry as much weight" as Top Gear's Jeremy Clarkson, too?

Top Gear Car of the Year 2004
"Absolutely fantastic red-raw two-seater coupe with bags of power and rabid handling. From the moment you sit in the driver’s seat, the Z feels like something special. It has the right shape, the right noise, the right pace, the right poise. All at the right price. The Nissan 350Z deserves its place as our car of the year".

'Nuff said.

Apparently I've hit a nerve?

Don't hold back man. Say what you really want to say.

LMAO! In what way? They look kind of the same? That car was done tonque-in-cheek joke. They dropped 100,000 British Pounds into a POS Lada - to produce performance comparable to a well-sorted B13 with a good VE swap - a car which when even remotely close to stock is one of the worst cars ever built on the planet! When new, a Lada would start falling apart almost immediately after it left the lot.



Never mind, I withdraw my question whether you've even driven a 510. The answer is obvious, no one who has would compare these two cars, the Lada besides being a total Eastern Bloc Epic Fail, it's not even a Coupe.

THIS is the Lada sans the 100,000 lbs sterling:

Communist cars (Top Gear) HQ Part 1

What have I done to deserve this?
Wayne said the 510 "was a beauty". I agreed, comparing it's great looks to the Lada in question. And you yourself admit they look something similar.

I'd respond in earnest to your posts but I'm really just getting the feeling you're on crack and will come to your senses later.

Sure, no nerve needed. Just tired of wading through your OT posts, your jacking of other people's threads, about things you know nothing about, yet seem to hold opinions you regard as equally valid or better than others. Or, the current topic, Or comes to a Member's Rides thread and talks trash about their cars from an astounding position of ignorance?

And remember, you asked...

[INDENT]Ben, please STFU about constantly commenting on things you know nothing about on the forums, pissing on the "old" forum as "dead", and trying to promote yourself as somehow being at the top tier of Nissan and SR20 knowledge contributors. You have much to say about everything, yet little of true value to say about most things. Your OT comments have results in locked-down threads where you've tried to argue and compare yourself to the best in the game in terms of contributions, talking out of both sides of your mouth simultaneously about how much you've done and yet how you're not trying to say how "I'm not saying I'm some hot shot".[/INDENT]

Did I miss anything? Do we need examples?
http://www.sr20-forum.com/342999-post22.html (note the original topic was "sr20forum.com down"?)



I don't know of anyone else who has spent so much time "learning" through gro$$ trial and error, yet seems to regard this as an accomplishment. Frankly Ben, almost no one really likes a self-proclaimed "know it all", especially one who pisses all over things like adjustable control arm bolts then retracts it later when they figure out yet again they put it together backwards, or whatever. Or tests their first attempt at tuning FI at a track day then somehow ends up dissing the venue when their motor blows up.

Eric Hsu puts this far better than I can: Click on the link for the entire article, it has some content that won't pass the mods here

VFB (Virtual Forum Badasses)

These are the guys that are the amateur forum tuners or sometimes the tech gurus because they've tuned their car with moderate success and happened to do it on a dyno that read high, but have never actually had a job doing R&D, design, or anything else having to do with cars. They are, like the forum is a virtual word in itself, virtual badasses and that doesn't mean shit in the real world...

See above. Dude, I don't do crack or any other drugs, come to my place and say that to my face, VFB. Seriously, would you really say that to me in person? I wouldn't suggest trying it.