The Japanese carmaker has fallen on hard times lately and had to trim down its product range considerably. The affordable Datsun branch will likely be shut down soon, and Infiniti struggles to keep up in the USA even after abandoning Europe and Australia. Still, it is now official that neither the GT-R nor the 370Z are going.
The GT-R has been on the market since 2007, and the 370Z joined it in 2008 as a mere evolutionary step from the 2002 350Z. Sooner or later, both models will yield their place to better successors, but the dates and the successors themselves remain unknown. It is possible that the company strikes an alliance with another manufacturer for this, like Toyota did with its latest Supra. The company reaffirms that the car will still be a true Nissan.
Rumors used to be circulating that the new 370Z would be based on the Infiniti Q60 chassis and tech, including the AWD system and the twin-turbo V6. However, this sounds too close to the GT-R to be real.
As for the next GT-R, the coupe might switch to hybrid or electric power. The Italdesign GT-R50, while considered by some to be the successor to the series, is actually just a limited-edition spinoff launched to celebrate 50 years of the model.
In the meantime, sales of the elderly sports cars are slowly declining. On their core market – the USA – the 370Z fell from 10,215 copies sold in 2010 to just 3,468 in 2018. The GT-R was at the pinnacle of popularity with 1,730 copies sold in 2008, but declined to 538 in 2018.