Dan Baldwin

I'll be in the Z with any luck at all. If not, I'll be in a '91 240SX. Either way, the car is red, number 7. Wish me luck!

I guess you haven't seen the pictures of Carl Beck standing next to the 350Z and a 240Z. The new car is enormous. I've seen weight numbers ranging from 3000 to 3200 lb. If you keep up with projected weight numbers for new cars, you know that they ALWAYS fall short of the vehicle's weight when it comes out. Figure 3200 MINIMUM. 240Z weighs more like 2300 lb, so don't bother hoping the 350Z will come out lighter, it won't even be in the same ballpark. All-steel doesn't mean heavy, and all-aluminum doesn't mean lightweight (NSX weighs over 3000 lb. these days, Ferrari 360 ~3200lb., BMW Z8 weighs ~3600!). 350Z price is projected to be around $30k, not 25. Count on $32.5k at least. The designer is from Isuzu. He did the Vehicross. Still, he's not as bad as that TT guy, who also did the New Beetle and the New T-bird. Yuck, yuck, yuck. The TT is certainly a more ridiculous oferring than the 350Z, it's basically a tarted up Golf with less space and more weight. What a stupid car. Front-drive architecture pawned off as a sports car. More like Audi's answer to the previous generation Mitsubishi Eclipse (an OK car, for what it was, but not by any stretch a $40k sports car). For a two seat vehicle, in my book the new 350Z is beat by the Miata, the S2000, the Corvette, the Boxster, MR-2 Spyder, Z3 Coupe,...

It sucks. WAY too big, and yes, it will be heavy, too. Fine for a ZX, but this was supposed to be a Z, dammit! All they had to do was build a Miata coupe with an inline 6, weighing maybe 2500 lb. and having about 250 hp. Smaller, lighter, cheaper is what I wanted. We got another overgrown beast, and this time it isn't even good-looking like the Z32 was.