The chilli-pepper red Nissan 350Z is just the thing for blokes with comb-overs You have to feel for the people who manufacture cars for the midlife-crisis market. Men of a certain age traditionally salved their fevered brains by splashing out on a pricey little convertible, but now they can just buy an iPod and download half a lifetime's worth of pop music on to it. It may represent a similarly doomed attempt to recapture one's lost youth, but it's a much more economical exercise. What midlife crisis? The chilli-pepper red Nissan 350Z is just the thing for blokes with comb-overs Tim Dowling Tuesday July 26, 2005 The Guardian You have to feel for the people who manufacture cars for the midlife-crisis market. Men of a certain age traditionally salved their fevered brains by splashing out on a pricey little convertible, but now they can just buy an iPod and download half a lifetime's worth of pop music on to it. It may represent a similarly doomed attempt to recapture one's lost youth, but it's a much more economical exercise. Article continues I like to think that I have now passed through my midlife crisis and come out the other side (although this is not strictly accurate because I have discovered that there is no other side), so a chilli-pepper red sports car is fairly surplus to my requirements. Let's face it, the Nissan 350Z roadster is wildly impractical. With only two seats, every journey starts with me telling two of my three children they can't come. The boot is about the size of that little cage they use to measure your carry-on bag at Ryanair check in. For anything approaching an errand, you will require an additional vehicle. In terms of how much help you're going to be when it comes time to ferry the folding tables back from the school fair, you may as well have come on your bike. But what the hell. This is one cool car; sleek and sculpted, with a vague retrospective nod to the old 240Z (back when Nissans were called Datsuns), the 350Z has ejector-style seats, fetchingly curved headlamps, groovy aluminium door handles and some of the best-looking wing mirrors I've ever seen on a car. The Brembo brakes are considered so impressive that their placement ensures you can read the logo through the wheel spokes. People usually don't say "Hey! Nice brakes!" unless you suddenly use them to avoid hitting a cat, but with the 350Z you can attract brake fanciers while motionless. When you drive a car like this, people want to ride with you, and when they get into it they immediately start to complain. I put this down to jealousy; they really want to be in the driving seat. One passenger felt that the windscreen wasn't high enough. Another thought the interior a bit spartan, considering. Another objected to me listening to Radio 4 while driving it. What do I have to prove? In any case, this is really a car for riding around in by yourself. The instruments are all hooded and angled towards the driver. Passengers are not even allowed to look at the clock. With the top down and the wind in my hair, I felt a bit, I don't know, divorced. Actually, the wind doesn't really get in your hair because considerable wind tunnel time has been expended creating a turbulence-free interior. Men with combovers, you have nothing to fear. Welcome to top-down driving. Welcome to your second childhood. The 350Z has a top speed of 155mph, which I really wouldn't know about, but even at low speeds it handles brilliantly. It probably doesn't look that impressive as I negotiate the twists and turns of Sainsbury's carpark in second gear, but the huge surplus of power feels impressive. Real driving enthusiasts would probably prefer the coupe version of the 350Z; with a solid roof on it, it's always going to be that much more rigid. The roadster has been strengthened a bit with various reinforcement bars and gussets incorporated in the frame, which makes it about 110kg heavier than the coupe. You can shave off a bit of the weight by opting for alloy wheels, but this will also lighten your wallet by £1,000. The elaborate mechanism by which the top stows away takes about 20 seconds to complete, which is not quick, but it is very interesting to watch: the rear window comes forward, the roof goes back, a compartment behind your head opens and the whole things folds up and disappears. You can perform the manoeuvre anywhere, so long as you've got your foot on the brake, but the button is wisely located to the right of the steering console where young, novelty-hungry passengers can't get at it. The 350Z boasts what is called a "refined exhaust note", which is to say they have tinkered with the engine in order to give it a nice throaty sound, in keeping with the idea that much of the "emotional appeal" of a sports car rests with the noise it makes. This strikes me as a stupid idea, and the fact that they have adjusted the vroom to make it louder for my benefit seems a tacit acknowledgment on their part that I am a bit of a prat. I cannot quite imagine the chain of circumstances that would lead me to feel I deserved a car like this, but it would almost certainly start with me finding £27,000 in the road. And it would end, horribly, with golf lessons. If you think a sports car might help you overcome the numbing dread of impending death, this is definitely the right car, and chilli-pepper red is definitely the right colour. But examine all the alternatives before you walk into the dealership. Sometimes a simple course of antidepressants does the trick.
