Is it lifestyle

[Alfadog]

A little off-track here, talking about the 2+2. Personally I think they're a great looking car if you totally discount the 2 seater. How people could call them ugly (being somewhat hypocritical here as I have been known to call them bad words myself!) is beyond me, as the exterior is 80% the same as the 2 seater.

Basically the 2+2 is a fantastic looking car, but often gets called ugly simply because the 2 seater is absolutely bloody beautiful. That little difference in the length/quarter window/roof kink does so much to the car's appearance...

[Zedrally]

Long live 2+2's!

Only a metal nose 2+2 could be better.

[Walter Moore]

Any discussion of the 240Z in the U.S. is incomplete if it fails to take into account the fact that the U.S. "Baby Boom" generation, those born in the halcion days just after WWII, were just reaching their young adult years at the time the Z was introduced.

The boomers shaped most of the buying patterns in the states from the late 60's to today. At that point they were mostly young, un-married, and making what were incredible wages, adjusted for inflation. They were, and most remain today, spoiled, self-indulgent, and self-centered. Two seater sports cars were just the ticket to stroke their already inflated egos.

I ought to know... being born in 1960 means that "I are one..."

Just barely however...

[2ManyZs]

I guess to follow on what Walter said, you'd also have to take into account Mr. K's influence on the advertising of the Z car in the US at the time also. I think he understood why the British sports cars were selling so well in the mid to late 60's. Cheap, simple, reliable(well, sometimes anyways) and most of all they were nearly all 2 seat cars. Now during those years, the VW's were selling like the proverbial "hotcakes" at the time, but can anyone really get in the back seat of a Bug?

If you look at the numbers of Jaguar XKE's sold in the US, I think you would probably see a similar drop in sales when the 2+2's were introduced. People get used to something in one way and resist it when someone tries to change it, almost like everytime a new OS is introduced for the computers we use.... we get used to one thing and don't really want to change until someone forces us too.......

Now, if the 2+2's had been imported from the beginning of sales in the US, you probably would have seen much higher sales numbers.

Now, if we had never seen a 2 seat model, would the 2+2's have sold in the same number as the 2 seaters? Good question....