The Japanese automaker Nissan ran into trouble in the U.S. and even in its own country in the mid 1990s. Here in the states, almost all turbocharged imports were getting a bad name because of eager enthusiasts blowing up their rotary Mazda's motor or the smog problems faced by cars like the almighty Toyota Supra. Even Nissan decided to pull the technologically advanced 300ZX TT off the market because it just became too expensive for a conservative market. At home, the twin turbo Z32 lived on until the year 2000, the all around excellent sports car found itself in a precarious position between the much more affordable and equally as desirable S15 Silvia and Godzilla himself, the R34 Skyline GT-R. At the end of the day Nissan killed off all of its turbo sports cars, but the Z was unfortunately the first to bite the dust.

Today the word turbo is more synonymous with efficiency than it is with power, so in an attempt to join automakers like Ford, BMW and Volkswagen with mass produced turbocharged vehicles, Nissan is adapting the World Class VQ engine to accept boost. The current VQ37HR engine, found in the Nissan 370Z and Infiniti G37 models, is an outstanding piece of engineering, however in order to get the most it has to bee run higher up in the RPM band which burns an excessive amount of gas. So the Japanese automaker is reportedly experimenting with downsizing and turbocharging the VQ as a means of efficiency. Hopefully there will be a few tricks from the the GT-R built in or even a twin turbo 3-something Z.

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