Turns out Generation Z doesn’t want a Z-car, it wants a 510.
Nissan unveiled a pair of concept cars at the 2013 Tokyo Motor Show this week that are the result of a co-creation effort that solicited input online from so-called “digital natives,” the group of people born after 1990.
Although the project started with a clean sheet of paper and aimed to produce a vehicle free of “legacy influences,” the IDx that resulted from it looks much more like a 21st Century-version of the Datsun 510 from the late 1960’s and early 1970’s than anything on the streets today, including Nissan’s own 370Z sports car.
Shown in both Freeflow street and Nismo track versions, the compact three-box two-doors embrace a combination of simplicity and efficiency, with tidy interiors upholstered in denim and Alcantara, respectively, and powered by 1.2-1.6-liter four-cylinder engines matched to CVT automatic transmissions.
No word if the IDx will spawn a production car, but Nissan says the process that created it could have real world applications soon.