Nissan Is Working On An Electrified Silvia Comeback

Nissan’s entry-level, rear-wheel drive sports car bowed out in the early 2000s, but its reputation as a car person’s car has stuck around for the proceeding decades. Now, Nissan looks to be reviving its smaller sports car with an electrified powertrain, per Drive. Speaking with Australian media, Nissan Vice-President Global Product Strategy Ivan Espinosa said that the project isn’t very far along, but it is in progress. “We've been doing some very early upstream exercises of what the architecture could look like,” Espinosa said. “You need to find something that can work globally in order to have enough scale.”

Nissan needs to sell a lot of these to make it work, competing with combustion-only staples like the Toyota GR86/Subaru BRZ and the Mazda Miata. Given this, we’re guessing pricing will be similar — around $30-40k depending. Likely, a more novel drivetrain, such as a hybrid ICE setup or a full EV, will drive up costs. It could also alienate enthusiasts. Predictably, the folks buying small, manual-equipped sports cars aren’t the people looking for the latest in automotive tech. Nissan will have its work cut out for it to appeal to more traditional enthusiasts.

Money, is of course, another issue: “I won't go into more details, just saying it's electrified, [and with a] potentially electrified sports car, the assets need to be created from the ground up. This requires a serious level of investment, and this is what's proving a bit difficult at the moment,” says Espinosa. “But I'm trying, as I said and I keep saying it in my brain, three sports cars in my line-up, a GT-R, a Z, and something else. And this something else in my brain is called the Silvia. Now, will we do it? I'm trying.” Ideally, the Nissan exec says, we’ll see something before the end of the decade.

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