Table of Contents
Nissan Z
The new Nissan Z, over the last year, has become one of the most hyped sports cars, and this is all before it has officially dropped on the market! And this is for good reason, because it is shaping up to be one of the most compelling new sports cars on the market currently shaping up to be one of the most compelling new sports cars on the market. Prior to its announcement, Toyota, currently the largest automaker in the U.S. by sales, had convinced the entire car enthusiast community that the only financially viable way to make a sports car was to share platforms and engines with other manufacturers, and even then, a manual transmission wasn’t economically viable. Such was the approach that Toyota took with the 86 (manufactured by Subaru using their platform and engine) and the Supra (manufactured by BMW using their platform and engine).
Nissan, in sharp contrast, has been a walking disaster for the last 20-25 years under the management of former CEO Carlos Ghosn, also CEO of Renault at the time. During his tenure, the quite excellent Nissan sports car lineup, the Skyline GT-R, the 300ZX, and the Silvia, were axed within a period of 2 years due to the high costs of using bespoke platforms and mechanicals for each of them. Yes, the Z continued on as the 350Z, but the effects of management by Ghosn, known unceremoniously as “Le cost cutter,” began to show.
The interior of the 350Z was massively cheapened out compared to its predecessor, and has aged quite poorly in hindsight. Even the successor, the 370Z, has unfortunately been beholden to cheap interior materials, and the halo car of the brand, the R35 GT-R, has interior materials that are much too cheap for its price point. And both of these vehicles, despite these obvious limitations, were kept in production for much longer than they should have been, with the 370Z not being updated with a new model for 12 years, from 2008 to 2020, and the R35 GTR still being produced and pretty similar to how it was in 2007. How can a company claim a car is a halo: the pinnacle of its technological and performance achievements, when it comes from a time before Instagram existed!
However, in 2018, things changed rapidly. Carlos Ghosn was arrested in Tokyo in 2018 under charges that he used company assets for personal gain and securities fraud. Ghosn claims that he was targeted in Japan because many Nissan executives and Japanese politicians feared a French takeover of the firm (i.e. their jobs and way of doing things were threatened), and Renault executives, French businessmen, and politicians targeted him because he was unwilling to play by their rules and work with the establishment. How much of this is true, and how much of this is fiction for the media to eat up remains to be seen. What is clear, however, is that he, in something that sounds less like the truth and more like a movie, snuck himself out of Japan inside an instrument case that was loaded onto a private plane bound for Lebanon (his home country) via Istanbul.
After nearly a quarter century of drama, with Nissan’s U.S. biggest sales market being rental car fleets, and the sales and profits dwindling, what does Nissan do? They introduce the ultimate dark horse to the sports car market to the world, the Z prototype. Heritage inspired styling? Check. A more powerful, in-house built Engine and chassis? Check. Manual Gearbox? Nissan, in addition, released the prototype in near-production ready form last year, and sales will open within a few months. Toyota, in contrast, got the public excited for a new Supra way back in 2014 by releasing the FT-1 concept, and then, for the production car, released it a re-badged BMW Z4 that did nothing to capture the hype, energy, and legend of what its 1990s predecessor embodied, and, to top it all off, the styling was a disappointment compared to the concept!
Nissan, by announcing and releasing the Z with all the features enthusiasts say they want, and doing so in the backdrop of massive company instability, has completely taken any spotlight Toyota had for its “halo” car away form them, and shown the world that what Toyota was claiming about the sports car market was little more than a lie to justify cost cutting measures that it thought its customers wouldn’t notice. It showed the world that Toyota management failed to understand the identity of the Supra brand, and, in the process, made them look like a parent trying to tell their kid that the knockoff toy they bought them on Christmas was “basically the same thing” as the popular toy that all their friends had. News Flash: it looks fake and never works. As a result, of cars to look forward to for 2022, the Nissan Z is definitely the most compelling sports car.
Toyota GR Corolla
In my honest opinion: Toyota had no choice with this one. The Supra that I mentioned earlier has, rightly, proven to be a massive flop. People buy Toyotas for their engineering and reliability, and well, the BMW-made, built-in-Austria Supra hasn’t exactly been a shining star in that regard, especially considering SEVEN recalls have been announced by BMW regarding the Supra just in 2021. News Flash: BMW is a competitor, they have zero incentive to build cars well for you. You present them an I win (make more cars that can be sold) you lose (the Toyota brand suffers and more people consider buying other cars instead, maybe sometimes a BMW) scenario, and you expect them to build cars to Toyota’s brand famous standards! You are idiots!
It would be one thing if Toyota was releasing boring cars everywhere in the world, but that isn’t the case. Instead, Toyota of late has been releasing some EXCELLENT cars, just not for the U.S. Market. One example that come to mind are the Mark X GRMN; a large sedan that, while looking like a TRD Camry, is actually a manual-only, rear-wheel drive limited edition special; one that shares its engine with the Lotus Exige.
Also coming to mind is the GR Yaris, a small, three door, manual only hatchback with a 270 hp 3 cylinder turbo engine that was designed to be a homologation rally special: something that has been unheard of for the last 20-30 years. When the GR Yaris was first released last year, there was a lot of hype, even in the U.S, despite the U.S. being the only market where Toyota wasn’t planning on selling the GR Yaris. However, the interesting thing about the GR Yaris is that the rear half of the car isn’t even a Yaris at all! Due to the wider rear track width of the GR Yaris compared the standard model, the rear suspension is from the Corolla, which is where the rumor mill started.
With Toyota releasing excellent sporting models for overseas markets only that were built and developed entirely in house, and Toyota’s highest performing, built entirely-in-house being the 170 hp Corolla XSE (essentially a rebadged Toyota Auris) whose sole sporting credential is an available manual gearbox, it would be understandable that Toyota’s loyal brand enthusiasts in the U.S (Toyota’s largest market) would be feeling like they were getting a raw deal. It is likely Toyota management knew this, and, given the complaints of the two joint-venture sports cars Toyota has sold in the U.S. ( the weak engine in the previous generation FRS/GT86, and the fact that the BMW Toyota Supra was automatic only, low on power compared to its direct competitors, and was been subject to SEVEN recalls just in the first year), management had to do SOMETHING to get a PR win, which gets us back to the GR Corolla.
And this is exactly what the marketing team at Toyota has been doing. While they haven’t announced the car, they have been heavily teasing it. In recent promo shots for the Toyota Corolla XSE, there was not only a coded reference to the engine used in the GR Yaris (which is what is rumored to also be in the GR Corolla), but also references to the inclusion of four-wheel drive and the plan for the car to be sold in North America. In earlier promo materials for the current generation 86 (GR86), the presence of a manual gearbox was also alluded to, which is where the source for much of the hype is.
What does this all mean? Likely, when Toyota finally drops their hot-hatchback for North America, it will likely include the following features from the GR Yaris:
- The manual transmission
- The 257 horsepower, 1.6 liter turbo 3 cylinder engine
- The four-wheel drive system
- The rear suspension, since the GR Yaris borrows that from the Corolla anyway.
Pricing is unknown given the fact it is still in the stage where Toyota is hinting at something, not announcing it. Nonetheless, expect pricing to be in the 30-40k price point. Of cars to look forward to in 2022, the GR Corolla is the performance car I’m most eagerly awaiting for, as it could be a return-to-form for Toyota, so stay tuned.
Next-gen Mazda 6
Mazda, from the late 1990s until the mid-2010s, wasn’t really a company that embodied excellence. Compared to other Japanese brands like Toyota and Honda, their products weren’t nearly as durable, as I found them to be much cheaper-feeling and prone to rust. This, in my view, is likely a byproduct of their nearly 40-year partnership with Ford. This ownership peaked from 1996-2008, when Ford owned over a third of Mazda and when their products were at their lowest quality. This ended when Ford gradually divested their stake in full from 2008 to 2015.
Surprise surprise, once Ford was out of the picture, Mazda products began to improve massively! Since 2015, management has sought to take the Mazda brand upmarket as a sport luxury brand, and have significantly improved the reliability, interior build quality and driving feel of vehicles across the Mazda lineup. All of these efforts have, in my view, made Mazda go from a brand that doesn’t really warrant any attention, to a brand that deserves much more attention than it is getting, making their recent vehicles excellent choices in both the new and used market, and Mazda over the last 5 years one of the most significant brand turnarounds in the recent history of the automotive industry.
However, with the recent discontinuation of Mazda’s largest sedan, the Mazda 6, the brand has been left without a flagship sedan. However, over the last three years, Mazda has confirmed a number of plans for its future that offer a bright outlook for products that enthusiasts will want to buy. These include:
- A new, longitudinal-platform to build more rear and all-wheel drive vehicles
- Two new inline-6 cylinder engines (one gasoline, one diesel)
- More hybrid vehicles (likely due to a growing partnership with Toyota)
- A fully-independent suspension utilizing double wishbones at the front and a multi-link setup at the rear (which is fantastic for driving dynamics)
The details listed here have been confirmed by Mazda, and will be used in the next generation of Mazda Crossovers according to Mazda Australia managing director Vinesh Bhindi. That brings us back to the Mazda 6 sedan. While no announcement has been made specifically regarding a next-gen model, Mazda’s stated desire to continue the design language of its Vision Coupe concept shown in 2017 (a four door sedan, mind you) means that a next-gen model is likely. And according to the rumors, a formal announcement can be expected during 2022, and there may even be an available manual transmission.
If Mazda is able to actually pull off their plans to move upmarket and convince customers of this, then Mercedes-Benz and BMW should be scared. Hyundai, with the Genesis brand, has already been nipping at the Germans’ feet with less-expensive, less costly to maintain luxury cars that are equally well built, and that is despite Genesis lacking truly fun-to-drive cars. If Mazda can pull off it’s plan to move upmarket, while still maintaining fun-to-drive cars that are nearly as reliable as Toyotas (expected due to growing ties between the two companies), then the Germans are DONE. Why pay thousands more for a Mercedes-Benz or BMW only to look like an old man, a dictator, or a tacky middle eastern oil sheikh with more money than taste, when you can have a fun-to-drive, reliable car that feels like a luxury car on the inside, costs less than a luxury car, and is from a trendy brand that has the most youthful buyers of any car brand in the U.S?
Of new Mazdas coming out, I am most exited for the next generation Mazda 6. Luxury car quality, Japanese reliability, inline 6, and manual gearbox? Where do I sign? Oh, and please, PLEASE, make a wagon off of this platform, and give us the Diesel inline 6 too, especially if you can get one car that has all this and the manual!
Bremach
(MARCH 2022 UPDATE: Due to the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, Bremach’s plans to sell a modified version of the Russian-built UAZ Patriot have been cancelled)
Technically, this is two vehicles, but while new, up-and-coming electric vehicle brands may get all the attention, the one that I am most interested in is the brand-new Bremach brand. Well, technically it isn’t new, but the story behind it is equally fascinating, and they are new to the passenger vehicle space (link here to their website)
Bremach has actually been around since 1956 as an Italian manufacturer of commercial grade vehicles such as the Bremach T-rex, an off-road capable commercial cab-on-chassis co-developed with UAZ. It was released in the early 2010s and has similar in form the Mercedes Unimog, albeit smaller. Interestingly, Bremach declared bankruptcy in 2015, and the company was fully defunct by 2018, with one key exception. While its Italian parent went bankrupt, the American office somehow found a way to keep going, which is where this Bremach comes from.
At the 2021 LA International Auto Show, Bremach announced two vehicles built on the same platform; the BRI 4×4 pickup truck, and the 4×4 SUV, would be released onto the American market. Despite the terrible names, this actually is a very significant event in American automotive history, as these two vehicles will be the first Russian automobiles ever to be sold new in the United States!
So how does the American office of an Italian Company that went bankrupt relate to their product, a Russian-designed SUV? Remember the collaboration I mentioned with UAZ prior to the bankruptcy? Yeah, UAZ is a Russian company from Ulyanovsk (UAZ in Russian stands for “Ulyanovsk Automobile Plant”), which is the birthplace of none other than Vladimir Lenin himself. The two vehicles, the Brio and the 4×4, are actually rebadged versions of UAZ’s Patriot homologated to meet the U.S. Federal Government’s standards (FMVSS/EPA) and assembled in California (to avoid the 25% tariff known as the “chicken tax,” of course)
Pricing for the Bremach 4×4 SUV starts at $26,405, and pricing for the BRIO 4×4 pickup starts at $27,882. This makes the 4×4 SUV the cheapest body-on-frame SUV on sale in America, undercutting the base price of the Jeep Wrangler by $2k. The BRIO pickup, meanwhile, is the cheapest 4WD pickup truck on sale in America, but far from the cheapest truck (that title goes to the $19,995 base priced, unibody, front wheel drive only Ford Maverick) on sale in the U.S.
Both the truck and the SUV are being marketed as simple, purpose-built off roaders. The interior, like the design of the UAZ patriot itself, is straight out of 2005.The driveline is nothing special, a 154 hp, 2.7 liter 4 cylinder unit available with a standard 6 speed automatic. However, the availability of an optional 5 speed manual is a positive plus, and Bremach, in the press release, announced that they are ultimately planning on offering a V8 engine that will provide more power. While the option of having center and rear locking differentials is nice, the option of having front locking differential like the one available on the Jeep Wrangler and Ford Bronco would be much appreciated. Nonetheless, with Bremach marketing these vehicles as being ultra-customizable and affordable, options should eventually show up on aftermarket to rectify that.
However, the biggest potential I see of the Bremach 4x4s is to de-throne the Jeep Wrangler as the default in the customizable off-roader genre. Personally, I’m no fan of the Jeep brand in its modern form. Personally, I find their flamboyant celebration of the Second World War and it’s ‘muh freedom image to be in poor taste. Factor in the poor reliability, bysmal safety track record, and the continuous issues with build quality, and, even if my personal distaste for the brand weren’t there, I could never recommend them. Nonetheless, they are popular with both by less-well Americans as living proof of American exceptionalism due to the WWII association, by wealthier Americans as the go-to beach vehicle, and by young people to convey the message of an active, go-anywhere lifestyle (by doing the same thing everyone else is doing!).
Personally, I like the idea of an off-roader that conveys the go-anywhere image, is customizable, and offers a manual transmission, especially one made by a manufacturer that matches the go-anywhere aesthetic with the function to back it up. Bremach, with the connection to UAZ and to Russia as a whole, has the potential to convey an image of reliability by developing that association with conquering the harshest terrain in the world at an affordable price (Mongol Rally marketing opportunities anyone?) The Russia connection can also enable Bremach to troll its competitors very effectively (and garner free publicity) becoming the anti-Jeep.
With such a strong culture associated with the Jeep brand, I see a potential for the Bremach to become a counterculture product; a hipster dark horse for those that don’t buy into the narrative and image of the Jeep brand, and instead, are thinking people that don’t just follow the crowd. And that is the potential for Bremach. If they prove their product is reliable and competent, by shamelessly rejecting the mainstream consensus in the market, they will become genuinely cool, and I really look forward to watching this play out. Could it make my list of the most reliable SUVs ever made? Only time will tell.
Summary
Even if 2022 looks to be a tense year in other ways, in terms of motoring, it looks to offer some new and compelling options compared to years past. What do you think, which vehicle are you most looking forward to in 2022? Which of these would you buy? What do you think of the new Bremach brand? Let me know in the comments below.
