2026 Nissan Z Reviews, Pricing & Specs

When you go shopping for a 2026 Nissan Z, you’ll choose between Sport, Performance, Heritage Edition, and Nismo trim levels. Pricing ranges from $44,215 to $66,995, including the $1,245 destination charge. Our test vehicle was in Heritage Edition trim, had no options, and carried a manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP) of $57,155, including destination.

New for the 2026 model year, the Z Heritage Edition is based on the Nissan Z Performance. For an extra outlay of $2,940, you get a Midnight Purple paint job previously used on the Nissan GT-R, bronze 19-inch Rays forged aluminum wheels, a carbon-fiber rear spoiler, and retro-inspired Twin Turbo graphics. Special floor mats and unique door kick plates distinguish this model inside.

We think the Nissan Z is an attractive car, and prefer it to the tired Ford Mustang and the wild Toyota Supra. The Z is a rarity on the road, too, making it more exclusive than its primary rivals. What about the Honda Prelude? Please.

Depending on the angle and the light, the compelling Midnight Purple paint can appear to shimmer in violet, deep purple, lush green, or enticing aqua. The Heritage Edition’s bronze wheels, graphics, and accents pair beautifully with the paint.

Inside, the Z’s three dash-top gauges provide retro continuity with the exterior design, but the cabin is otherwise modern with the exception of the clunky hand-operated parking brake and switchgear that smells like Nissan, circa 2010. Overall interior quality seems a touch better than a Ford Mustang's but falls short of a Supra's (the latter benefits from BMW materials and switchgear).

There are a couple of misfires regarding the control layout. The tiny markings on the climate control knobs are hard to see, and the gloss-black background used for the steering wheel controls can be so reflective on a sunny day that the control markings are illegible.

One of the best things about the Nissan Z lives beneath its long, shapely hood. There, you’ll find a twin-turbocharged 3.0-liter V6 engine producing 400 horsepower and 350 pound-feet of torque (420 hp and 384 lb-ft in the Z Nismo). A six-speed manual gearbox or a nine-speed automatic transmission with paddle shifters delivers that power to the rear wheels.

Nissan says the twin-turbo V6 requires premium gas and should return between 19 mpg and 22 mpg in combined driving. Our test car had a 20 mpg EPA fuel economy rating, and we observed 21.4 mpg on our Southern California evaluation loop.

Upgrade from the Z Sport to the Z Performance, and you get a SynchroRev Match system for the manual transmission, a mechanical limited-slip differential for the rear-drive drivetrain, performance brakes, and 19-inch forged aluminum wheels. The Nismo Z is tuned for track duty with chassis bracing, revised steering, upgraded brakes, and exclusive suspension tuning. That version also has wider rear wheels and super-sticky high-performance summer tires.

If you want a refined driving experience, the Z isn’t for you. The clutch is springy, the ride is choppy, and the road noise is deafening. The front air dam isn’t shy about introducing itself to the pavement on driveway aprons, in drainage channels, or over speed humps. Drive it with enthusiasm, and you may find the shifter notchy, the steering uninvolving, and the rear wheels greasy.

These traits keep a driver on high alert when sluicing down a canyon road, and the Z is a real thrill ride because you never quite know what to expect. Will that lump in the middle of that off-camber curve unsettle the car? Will that repaired blacktop in the middle of an upcoming bend cause unanticipated weight transfer? If I get on the gas too soon or too much, will the rear end slither around? With the Z, anything is possible, which makes this car hard to trust anywhere near its limits.

That twin-turbo V6 is a gem, though. Power effortlessly surges out of this engine, and it sounds fantastic when it’s revving. The manual gearbox’s SynchroRev feature is a gift that keeps on giving, and the test car’s Bridgestone Potenza S007 performance tires offer laudable handling grip. Braking performance proved flawless during our evaluation, from pedal response and feel to fade resistance. If there is a weak link here, it’s the steering. Nicely weighted and responsive enough, it simply isn’t quick, precise, or communicative—three traits you need from a sports car.

The Nissan Z is a visceral machine to drive, but at the end of a run down a favorite road, you can feel both exhausted by the experience and exhilarated that you’re still rubber-side down. There's a sense that if you don’t respect the Z, it will bite you. Hard. Raw sports car authenticity is inherent in that feeling, but we’re not into it in an uncontrolled environment where rockfall, shady damp spots, cyclists, wildlife, and other perils require an unbreakable trust between man and machine.

A small but subtle detail provides a hint of the car’s underlying age when you walk up to the Z. It doesn’t have a passive keyless entry system, so you must pull the key fob from a pocket and press a button to unlock the car.

Z Performance and Heritage Edition models welcome you inside with heated, leather-wrapped front seats that are partially power-adjustable. Little electric motors whir the seats forward and back in their tracks and recline them. For added thigh support and other adjustments, two twist knobs and a lumbar lever do your bidding. By fiddling with all these controls, we found a properly bolstered, supportive driving position, but after a few hours, the driver’s seat just felt hard. From a car company known for its typically comfortable Zero Gravity seat designs, this is hard to accept.

Outward visibility is decent. The large side mirrors are a blessing, and the view to the rear through the back window is unexpectedly good. Still, the Z desperately needs a surround-view camera system, and a high-resolution reversing camera would be nice because the current level of resolution is almost useless at night.

Storage is adequate for a sports car, with a deep slot under the climate controls that can hold your phone, a sliding center armrest that exposes an extra cupholder and a small bin, and a decent-sized glove compartment. Sizable shelves with pull-out compartments are located behind the seats.

Open the liftback, and you’ll find a 6.9-cubic-foot trunk that can hold a single full-size suitcase and a couple of smaller bags. But whatever you place in the cargo area is completely exposed to whoever looks into the rear window.

In all Nissan Z trims, drivers face a 12.3-inch digital display with Normal, Enhanced, and Sport modes. You’ll find a comprehensive menu of vehicle settings and intuitive steering wheel controls to cycle through them.

The Z Sport has an 8-inch touchscreen infotainment system with wired Apple CarPlay, wired Android Auto, and two USB ports. Upgrade to the Z Performance, Heritage Edition, or Nismo, and the screen grows to 9 inches while adding wireless Apple CarPlay (Android Auto is still wired), NissanConnect Services with Wi-Fi hotspot access, a navigation system, and an eight-speaker Bose premium audio system.

Volume and tune/select knobs, tuning buttons, and menu shortcut buttons are benefits of this older version of the NissanConnect tech. Otherwise, the infotainment system leaves plenty to be desired, from its clunky layout to its maddeningly incompetent voice recognition system.

Setting aside its consistent inability to understand what we said or to translate anything into meaningful information, the system thought directions to a cat doctor were appropriate when we searched for a hospital as a point of interest. A request for directions to a favorite burrito joint revealed that someone responsible for creating the system’s POI database misspelled “Chipotle” as “Chipolte,” but Apple CarPlay solved that problem.

Nissan equips the Z with the safety features you need, and none you don’t. This is a driver’s car, after all, so the expectation is that you’ll drive it rather than leave that responsibility to technology.

As such, the Z has forward-collision warning with pedestrian detection, automatic emergency braking, lane-departure warning, blind-spot monitors, and rear cross-traffic alert. For highway trips, adaptive cruise control allows you to relax a bit. At night, automatic high-beam headlights better illuminate dark roads.

Aside from some intermittently inaccurate lane-departure warnings, the Z’s driver-assistance systems operated as expected. Still, as we noted earlier, a surround-view camera system and an improved reversing camera would be helpful.

Neither the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) nor the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) had performed crash tests on the Nissan Z at the time of writing.

Nissan identified a hole in the sports car market and plugged it with the Z. You can spend less on the immensely satisfying Mazda MX-5 Miata RF, the Subaru BRZ, or the Toyota GR 86, but none of them can deliver the unbridled power of the Nissan Z. You can spend more on the remarkably sophisticated and slightly faster Toyota GR Supra, but its styling is unusual and it bows out after the 2026 model year.

The Honda Prelude also returns for 2026 as a front-wheel-drive (FWD) hybrid priced similarly to the base Nissan Z Sport. But, as good as the Prelude’s two-motor hybrid system is, it's a sports coupe, not a sports car.

That leaves another sporty coupe to consider: the Ford Mustang. A base Mustang EcoBoost costs less than $35,000 and includes a small back seat and superior in-car tech compared to the Z. For the same price as our test vehicle, you could park a hairy-chested Mustang GT Premium with a thundering V8 engine in your driveway.

Despite our criticism of the Nissan Z’s structural age and lack of sophistication, we like it. There’s an authenticity here that doesn’t apply to the BMW-based GR Supra, an air of exclusivity that the common Mustang can’t match, and prodigious power that leaves the Miata, the BRZ, and the GR 86 choking on clouds of burnt rubber. It might be an unruly little beast, but the 2026 Nissan Z deserves more love, attention, and respect than it gets.