LeftieBiker said:
That is one yawn-inducing supercar.
LOL. At my work, someone posted some leaked video of a near production version and in our cars Slack channel (is mostly sports car enthusiasts, esp. German), it got 2 thumbs up and 4 YES reactions. There are no negative reactions, so far.
Not sure if Z since 350Z was ever intended to be a "supercar". GT-R is kinda that. When 350Z came out (I had one for years), it was intended to be affordable. I think Car and Driver even called it a "poor man's" Porsche. 300ZX I hear became too bloated and expensive before it got killed so Nissan had no Z car for years.
Original 240Z was intended to be an affordable sports car. (And Z car in Japan was always (IIRC) called Fairlady Z w/no numbers.)
As for missed opportunity, for those that didn't know, Japanese sports cars (esp. 2-seater) seriously do NOT sell in large numbers in the US. Off the top of my head, the sports cars that sell well in the US tend to be Camaro and Mustang. Import (esp. Japanese), nope. A lot of sports car enthusiasts don't realize this fact about sales. They get excited about sports or sporty cars and then are quite surprised when they see the minuscule numbers.
If they were to do BEV and 2-seater sports car (350Z and 370Z were), that could mean even tinier sales... Sports car people aren't really the type to embrace BEVs.
If a vehicle can't sell in a large enough quantity at a competitive price, it will lose $. It can't recoup its R&D, tooling and other costs (e.g. administrative, marketing, training, documentation, etc.)
When I have time, I can point to some historical sales figures that can include cars like Z, Miata, S2000, GT-R (TINY sales in the US), RX-8, etc.