Our Roadster Grand Touring came with the mesh seats, which are the only seats that lack adjustable headrests. We can't see the tradeoff for ventilation being worthwhile. Also, the leg bolstering dug into the sides of our thighs. We haven't noticed that with the regular leather seats. Once underway, however, we forgot about that initial discomfort. We drove some 700 miles in the Roadster GT, almost all of them on two-lanes while cornering, accelerating and braking hard (we used the dead pedal a lot), and the seat didn't wear on us as much as we expected it to. But we still think cloth might be better than the mesh.
The seating position should be good for drivers with long legs, though the steering wheel felt a little close when the seat was adjusted for the legs of a six-footer. The Roadster boasts an inch more headroom than the hatchback, thanks to the articulation of the top's various mechanicals.
Tilt the steering column and the main pod of gauges moves with it, ensuring a clear view of the instruments for drivers of all sizes. The instruments consist of a big tachometer and flanking speedometer, fuel and temperature gauges. Nestled in three pods on top of the dash are a voltmeter, an oil pressure gauge and a digital trip computer. Reminiscent of the original Z, they look retro-cool, but reading them requires more than a glance.
Two toggles to the right of the steering wheel operate the trip computer, used to check outside air temperature, distance to empty, speed, average mileage, and average speed. It has a stopwatch function (to check out 0-60 times or lap times on a circuit or maybe for running a Monte Carlo style rally), and a tire-pressure monitor. With the Trip Computer, the driver can program a shift light to come on at a certain rpm. The small red indicator on the tachometer begins flashing about 500 rpm before the preset engine speed is reached, whereupon it comes on solid. You can program it for the ideal shift points for acceleration or for fuel economy, then let your peripheral vision pick up the indicator, which might prove more precise than using the seat of your pants. We've seen race cars with this feature (though the red shift light in those is sometimes as big as a golf ball). If you don't like this feature you can turn it off.
The interior of the Z suggests the carbon-fiber tub of a prototype racecar. The material surrounding the shifter and forming the center dash looks like carbon fiber. Likewise, the large expanse of gray material lining the door panels suggests carbon fiber in appearance. The quality of the materials is okay, though some of the pieces would never be allowed in an Audi. It looked austere at first, but grew on us. Stylish interior touches, such as the inside door handles integrated into aerodynamic pods for the side vents, give the Z a racy, modern look; with the AC at work on hot days, the handles chill to fit their frosty look. Passengers often grope for the door release the first time they try to get out, distracted by the big grab handles adorned with genuine aluminum and relieved by the Z's dot motif.
Audio controls are stylish and include a big volume knob, clearly marked buttons for channel seeking, and six station buttons that can be preset simply by holding them down. Below the radio are three large knobs for the automatic climate control system, which comes standard.
The leather-wrapped steering wheel looks and feels great, and comes with cruise controls. Overhead in the Coupe are well-designed map lights and a bin for sunglasses; in the Roadster, map lights beam out of the underside of the rearview mirror, which isn't as good. Power window switches are auto-up/auto-down. Nissan has responded to drivers' pleas for a place to plug in a radar detector by moving the power point previously located in the center console to the lower dash on the passenger side. A second power point remains in the bulkhead between and behind the seats, so you can power your cell phone, too.
The Z does not invite the consumption of beverages, hot or cold. There's a pair of cup holders in the center console, but they're mounted too far to the rear for easy access by the driver, and passengers will find them awkward. It might be best to ditch the cup holders and use the center console for storage. Each door hosts a cup holder molded into the forward portion of the map pocket, but the fit is tight and the door panel too vertical to accommodate anything broader than a soda can. The firm suspension makes drinking hot coffee from an open cup while underway a risky proposition on all but the smoothest highways. We recommend drinking your coffee at the coffee shop. This is a sports car, not a cruiser.
At first it doesn't seem like the Z offers much in the way of storage. For starters, there's no glovebox. Cars without the navigation system get a nice lined storage pocket above the radio; Nissan has fitted it with a lid hinged so that it closes easily and naturally, replacing the previous system that required grasping the lid between thumb and finger, pulling it out and carefully pressing it closed. There's a small, lined compartment on the center tunnel, another small, drawer-like bin in the dash to the right of the center stack, a spot on the outside of each seat for a pen or pencil and a net tacked to the drive tunnel in the passenger footwell.
Turn around, though, and the picture brightens considerably where a thoughtfully designed system of storage compartments provides handy places to stick stuff. From the driver's seat, you can access a large lockable box, bigger than a shoebox but smaller than a breadbox, built into the bulkhead behind the passenger seatback. When stopped, but without getting out of the car or opening a door, it's easy to flip the passenger seatback forward via a handle in the center of the seatback. Then, it's a simple matter to open a lid that reveals the storage bin. The lockable lid has a quality feel to it and the bin is lined to keep things from rattling about.
As the only lockable storage inside the car, this bin becomes a critical feature in the Roadster, and it falls short of expectations. Unlike with the Coupe, the passenger seatback in the Roadster has no mechanical release for tipping it forward. Instead, you press a rocker switch ungainly situated on the back side of the seatback; conveniently, it's an automatic, press-and-release process for tilting the seatback forward, but re-reclining the seatback requires holding the button during the entire process, often leaving you with a somewhat cramped arm. Also, in the admittedly unlikely event the car's battery dies or becomes disconnected, you're stuck without whatever you locked up securely out of your reach because you can't move the power seat. So don't put your emergency cell phone or wallet in there. A smaller bin is mounted higher and somewhat more awkwardly toward the center that could hold a map, checkbook, wallet, PDA or cell phone. Identical bins on the driver's side in the Coupe are accessed when standing outside the car by flipping the driver's seatback forward; in the Roadster, the larger of these gives way to the subwoofer that comes with the uplevel stereo in the Touring and Grand Touring models.
Cargo in the back of the Coupe rides in an hourglass-shaped well, squeezed in the middle by the shock towers and the big strut-tower brace that ties them together. (That cross brace is functional: Hatchbacks allow body flex and the Z's chassis engineers wanted to ensure a rigid monocoque.) The Z offers more cargo capacity than a Mazda MX-5, but less than a Porsche 911 or Boxster. We're comparing small boxes here. An avid golfer at Nissan says two golf bags will fit in the cargo compartment, if you pull the big woods out of the bag and load them separately.
The Roadster's trunk at 4.1 cubic feet is the smallest of the lot. Nissan alleges accommodations for a golf bag, posting a diagram on the underside of the trunk lid depicting which end of the bag to insert first.
The Roadster's power top operates similarly to that of the Boxster's. Prepping for windblown hair is a simple matter of pressing the foot brake and working a flat, rocker-type switch in the lower dash to the right of the steering column. Manual manipulation of a handle mounted in the center of the top's front bow is required to latch or unlatch it. The top retracts into a recess occupying the upper part of the trunk and is covered by a cleanly sculpted body panel that opens and closes as needed, avoiding the hassle of dealing with one of those detachable covers that many people throw into some dark corner of the garage. The top is unlined, with all the bows and links and pivots exposed.
