When Nissan debuted the latest Z as a prototype back in 2020, some folks hated its wide-open grille. Nissan has never forgotten this, and the company is constantly playing with the front end of the Z in hopes of quelling discontent. Unfortunately, those experiments always lead here: The new Nissan Z Heritage Edition.
The Heritage Edition, visually, appears to be only the lightest rework of the Customized Proto concept that Nissan brought out two years ago. The orange color, the black center stripe, the revised fascia, the wheels and fender flares — it’s all here. At least, it’s here if you’ve got an extra $6,165 in your pocket to throw on top of your purchase.
Mechanically, the Heritage Edition is a Performance-trim Nissan Z, with the limited-slip differential and Akebono brakes.The Performance usually includes a set of Rays wheels, but here they’re swapped out for a design that echoes the venerated RS Watanabe.
Those wheels sit below “fender extensions,” which appear to be stick-on garnishes that sit on the fenders. Hilariously, in the press photos, that garnish appears to already be peeling off of the car used for the shots.
The Heritage-specific color, New Sight Orange, recalls the beautiful orange you could get all the way back on the 240Z. It’s fantastic, I love it, it should be the standard on all Zs. Get rid of all other colors, actually. The stripes I’m less sold on, but they aren’t actively a turn-off either. They’re fine.
The grille, though, is a Problem. The standard Z grill is already split, with a difference in textures between the upper and lower half that neatly defines the boundary between them without actually taking up additional space. Here, the addition of a central bar ruins that spacing, and makes both the upper and lower grilles seem disproportionate.
It’s a shame, because what would otherwise be a nice-looking special edition is ruined by a single little bar across the grille. The $6,165 price jump for a the Heritage would’ve been hard to swallow regardless, but it would’ve been defensible — something that’s harder for me to say about the split-mouthed version.
