Was thinking about this the other day - when z32 came out it was pretty much Nissan's flagship right? I mean, the r32 GTR was only released in Japan and Australia, whereas the z32 was released in USA, Japan, Australia, Europe. Then we look at the 2000 model z32 and the fact it doesn't have dual airbags. What car, in 2000, didn't have dual airbags? Any Japanese econobox had dual airbags, even our local Commodore had dual airbags by this year. Shit, "lesser" Nissans had dual airbags, so why didn't z32? It may sound like I'm going on a bit, but I was just thinking that it's a shame that we can't import 2000 model zeds just because Nissan got too cheap, even though all other Nissan cars had these features. Thoughts? Cheers, -Kirill
Obviously exaggerating by calling it a shitbox, but it is kind of strange that it seems to be the only car in existence in 2000 that didn't have them.. -Kirill
Nope, just trying to figure out why it didn't get safety gear that every other car came with that year.. Do you know why? -Kirill
Weren't there other things that prevent us from importing 2000 model Z32's? I could swear is wasn't just airbags
Yeah possibly more, but airbags is the most obvious thing, as far as I know. It's weird though, American-market 300zx got dual airbags in 1996, but I think everywhere else it stayed single-airbag (1994-on). -Kirill
Trying to summon my memory at 3:09AM is difficult, but I think there was something along the lines of it not passing emissions. I think, again attributing this statement to my awesome 3AM memory, that the 2K 300ZX had the AIV and EGR removed or something along those lines, thus making it fail the emissions tests 'n' stuff.
It's quite simple really, they weren't making money on the Z32 so simply killed it off. You don't up the cost of a car by fitting parts that aren't legally required, safety regulations are not standardised around the world, the US introduced a lot of those to try and stem the takeover of the US car market by japanese manufactures. A bit like the Aussie rules about not being able to import Kiwi apples due to some non existant fungus. It's all about politics not economics eh
Not just the 2K model. My 98 jspec has one airbag. Also come with no HICAS, VVT, EGR, AIV, anti-lock brakes, cruise control, security or fancy AC control. Apart from the 2nd airbag, which would be nice, I'm not complaining.
Nissan was losing money in a big way around then, and the cost of engineering a new dashboard to accept a passenger side airbag would have been too great. They weren't making any money on the model any more, so spending those dollars would have been throwing good money after bad.
Blipman has explained this before, you will find the answer if you search his posts. From memory he said that if the car doesn't have dual airbags then to be complianced the RAWS workshop needs to obtain crash data from somewhere. So either from Nissan Japan (not likely) or by importing test vehicles to crash (expensive, especially considering that there isn't a huge market for the later model zeds).
I think you might find that a lot of manufacturers offered passangers airbags as an expensive option. My 04 patrol does not have a passanger airbag, I don't even know if it was an option for that year.
Sorry to detour the thread, but since when was Fire Blight a non existant fungus? Try Mr Google. Any country that is free of the disease would be crazy to import apples or pears from any country that has it. And NZ sure has it. So does the the USA and lots of other places. Nothing to do with politics. Normal transmission should now resume.
I think the fact that japans laws didnt require a passenger side airbag, as well as the fact that the 2k spec was more of a special edition then anything else. Not alot were made and the parts that were upgraded where easily swappable onto earlier models(tailights etc) so nissan didn't have to put a huge amount of money into designing these.
if cars require passenger airbags.......why don't airplanes require passenger parachutes? hmmm? Or more realistically, fuselage parachutes. Why do you need to be sitting down and belted up in a car, surrounded by cotten wool.... but in a bus or train..... you can be standing up surrounded by metal???? The fact is on importing, Australia has set itself up on some unrealistic moral highground when it comes to what cars should and shouldn't have, but then doesn't even regulate this after sale by means of a system like the MOT. Pointing towards these "saftey regulations" being nothing more than a method of control over the market.
Individual parachutes aren't going to be particularly useful seeing as the majority of society thinks the extent of operating a parachute is pulling a rip cord. Training everyone to use parachutes would probably be more infeasible than training everyone on L plates on skidpans, and fuselage parachutes probably more infeasible than that i dare say. I'm pretty sure airbags are a lot easier to implement into cars, than redoing all this flight safety stuff
like it matters, who gives a crap about airbags in a sports car. You dont call a car a shitbox coz it doesnt have airbags. You call it a shitbox when its a hatchback
