“Driving excitement will always be at the heart of Nissan, it’s what we do,” incoming Nissan CEO Ivan Espinosa told Top Gear. And that means four or five big, swinging Nissan halo cars that’ll showcase what it’s capable of.
The man credited as a proper ‘car guy’ will, as of April 1, run the company from the head of the table. He wants these signature Nissan beasts to be offered all across the globe.
Naturally, your mind runs to the Z coupe, the follow-up to the 370Z, and a little something called a ‘GT-R,’ but Espinosa applies the ‘driving fun’ bit literally.
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“We also have the Patrol,” he said. “If you go to Dubai or Abu Dhabi, you can drive it in the dunes. I’ve done it myself, it’s really exciting and super fun.” And we concur.
“I want to have four or five cars at the top of our portfolio that are really brand-oriented cars—cars that really represent what Nissan is about, that show what the heartbeat of Nissan is.
“These cars should go everywhere in the world,” he added, noting how ‘democratic’ discussions about which car should go where have sometimes meant some markets miss out on its gems. The UK doesn’t get the Z, for instance. The Patrol is a Middle East special (and sells incredibly).
“For me, the product is the brand, and if you really want to position the brand strongly, you need to be a bit more disciplined in this,” he explained. “This is one of the things I want to implement.
“I have some options about the cars, but you can imagine a future Z, if we ever do a more affordable car—which is still in my dream as I’ve told you—maybe the future GT-R, a future Patrol. These are, for me, the cars that really describe what Nissan is about. With this, we keep the dream alive of what driving excitement is.”
What about regulations, though? “It makes things difficult,” he said, “but in a couple of years as the regulations start converging into more electrified powertrains, it might be easier to do this.
“It’s getting more and more complicated—being a product planner these days is the most difficult job in the car business, because every day you find something different, something new: tariffs, regulations, different market trends. So it starts to become a very complicated chess game. You normally play in a level field, but now you have three different chessboards at the same time, so it becomes very complicated.
“But hopefully we can start implementing this soon,” he added.
And can we expect a future GT-R anytime soon? “We’re looking at options for the next GT-R.” A while back, Espinosa explained what form a future Godzilla could take, following the reveal of the bonkers 1,341hp Hyper Force concept (pictured below), and the bottom line is: dual motor, solid-state battery, AWD, super-fancy digital and AI tech, and something that’ll dance like GT-Rs of old.
NOTE: This story first appeared on TopGear.com. Minor edits have been made.
