Is the Japanese automotive industry undergoing a sports car renaissance? By the looks of it, every major player in the game has, at the very least, a concept in mind. Whatever it is, we’re here for it.
The latest company on the verge of bringing back a hallowed nameplate is Nissan. The company has confirmed that it is working on reviving the Silvia. It was Nissan Vice-President of Global Product Strategy Ivan Espinosa who dropped the bombshell.
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“We've been doing some very early upstream exercises of what the architecture could look like,” said the executive. Espinosa didn’t go into great detail about its development, but we’re expecting it to follow the classic recipe of the Nissan Silvia. That means a compact sports coupe with rear-wheel drive.
As it stands, Nissan has two coupes in its lineup, the Z and GT-R. The company doesn’t have an entry-level sports car in its stable, and it hasn’t had one for over 20 years. The last Silvia rolled out in 2002, marking the end of Nissan’s ‘affordable’ sports car line.
But now seems to be prime time to bring it back. One can say that the revival was kicked off by the Toyota 86 and Subaru BRZ in 2012. In some way, Mazda entered the fold with the MX-5 RF. More recently, Honda confirmed that the Prelude concept is going into production.
There is one thing about the Silvia revival that might upset the purists. Espinosa said that there’s a good chance of it coming with an electrified powertrain. It’s unknown if it will use e-Power technology, but it’s not outside the realm of possibility. Who knows, it might even be a turbocharged e-Power arrangement.
Should the Silvia revival reach production, there are several potential competitors that await it. The most obvious are the Toyota GR86 and its twin, the Subaru BRZ. By then, the reborn Honda Prelude would be available in showrooms as well.
Nissan’s commitment to the project is there, and fingers crossed the big bosses back up this project.
