Twin-Turbo Nissan 300ZXX Restomod Is a Completely Different Type of Virtual Breadvan

11 months, 2 weeks ago - 9 January 2024, autoevolution
Twin-Turbo Nissan 300ZXX Restomod Is a Completely Different Type of Virtual Breadvan
The Nissan group recently announced its sales figures for the 2023 calendar year in the United States, and the namesake Nissan division totaled over 834k units delivered, while the premium Infiniti brand rocked almost 65k.

All in all, Nissan sold 898,796 vehicles – up 23.2% compared to 2022, all thanks to Nissan soaring by 22.2% and Infiniti jumping almost 39%. Naturally, the SUVs and trucks outpaced the passenger cars more than two-to-one – over 288k for the latter and 610,539 for the latter. Interestingly, that doesn't mean they fared worse than last year – passenger cars were up 12.4%, and SUVs plus trucks jumped over 29%.

It's just that Nissan now relies heavily on just one crossover SUV (Rogue) for more than double the sales of its best-performing passenger car nameplates – Sentra and Altima totaled 109k and 128k, respectively. At the same time, the CUV delivered 271,458 units all by itself. Meanwhile, some models are entirely underperforming – like the 2024 Z (1,771 units) and GT-R (390 examples).

So, what could help the Japanese automaker to offset the balance? Of course, it's not another sports car since logic dictates that one won't sell like hotcakes based on 2023's results, right? Well, the imaginative realm of digital car content creators doesn't care about that! Instead, the parallel universes of vehicular CGI are filled with ideas for quirky or feisty Nissan sports cars.

But there is no need to take our word for granted as we have a proper – if wacky – example from London, UK-based virtual artist Al Yasid, better known as al.yasid on social media, who is again making purists run amok crying their Nissan outrage. This pixel master has a knack for transforming old-school nameplates like the MX-5 Miata, E30 BMW M3, or C2 Chevy Corvette, just to name a few, into absolute restomod marvels.

Just recently, he also worked on a louvered Nissan 300ZX (1983-2000) that would make any twin-turbo ducktail enthusiast pretty proud – and its louvered rear window, dual side exhausts, plus the slammed widebody and aerodynamic kit also gave way to aggressive thoughts of canyon carving. Well, maybe that was not enough to drive the virtual Nissan point home.

Next up, he proposed an off-road R35 Nissan GT-R that would make the day for any Baja fan. But wait, as there is more. The CGI expert quickly circled back to the Nissan 300ZX restomod – dubbed 300ZXX for obvious twin-turbo reasons – and transformed it into a Cyberpunk-style Breadvan Shooting Brake.

Of course, this is merely wishful thinking. But maybe that's precisely what the Japanese carmaker needs to do with its ailing sports cars – think outside the box for a minute and stop relying so heavily on their heritage to draw in a contemporary crowd.