Nissan rumoured to be bringing the Silvia back

Wednesday, 12 January 2022

The S15 Silvia was cut from the line-up in 2002 and we haven’t seen the badge since.

Back in the late 20th century, Nissan had three primary sports cars at its disposal. There was Godzilla, the Skyline GT-R, the longstanding Zed car in the form of the 300ZX, and the affordable Silvia.

Two of those survived, in the form of the GT-R and the 350Z, 370Z, and upcoming non-alphanumeric Z. Sadly, the Silvia badge has not graced the new car lots since 2002, when the S15 generation was cancelled.

Meet Nissan’s latest concept EVs, including a ute, a sports car, an SUV and what is probably the next Leaf.

However, according to a report from Japanese publication Best Car, Nissan could be looking to end the drought with a Silvia-badged all-electric sports car.

The new car would take inspiration from the Silvia’s past, as you might expect, skipping over the tuner-generation S13/S14/S15 models right back to the original CSP311. Just 554 of these were made, sold as the Datsun Coupe 1500, with only 49 making it to Australia, let alone New Zealand.

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The reborn Silvia EV could be inspired by the original CSP311 model.

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A rendering of the possible Silvia revival from Best Car.

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Apparently, the revival was ignited by sketches from Nissan Design Europe’s vice president, Matthew Weaver, shown last September. They don’t really show much, other than a small two-door sports coupe, but Best Car says they 'drew a lot of attention' and 'triggered a revival of the Silvia [as a] pure EV'.

The only real problem is that Nissan’s CMF-EV platform doesn’t currently support rear-wheel drive.

Considering it isn’t a ground-up EV platform, instead adapted from the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance’s combustion-based CMF, it may be more tricky to convert to rear-wheel drive than simply mounting a motor on the rear axle.

But, at the same time, surely it isn’t that hard…

Obviously, Nissan is saying precisely nothing about the whole thing, so take the rumour with a pinch of salt.

In the meantime, we can look forward to the new Z, which should land sometime this year. It also comes with a past-inspired design, boasting a 300ZX-like rear, 240Z-like front, and 370Z dimensions thanks to a heavily reworked version of the 370Z platform.

More importantly, it has a new 3.0-litre twin-turbocharged V6 making 298kW and 475Nm of torque, up 51kW and 108Nm over the outgoing 370Z’s 3.7-litre naturally aspirated V6. It will be paired with either a close ratio six-speed manual or a nine-speed automatic.

Nissan doesn’t specify performance, but it should be quite a bit faster than the old car. Notably, this is more power (but less torque) than rival Supra.

Aside from the due date, the last piece of the puzzle is local pricing. Considering the 370Z Nismo was selling for around $70k here a few years ago, we’d expect the Z to sit around the same area.

At the very least, it should be cheaper than the Supra.