Nissan Gripz Offers A Rally Fighting Take On A New Z-Car

If you want to go off-roading, you can choose from a tall hill of SUVs and trucks, large and small. If you want to go fast, there’s a similar pile of sports cars. But what if you want to go fast off-road—or at least look like you do when you’re not stuck in rush-hour traffic?

That’s the apparent target for this, the Nissan Gripz. The “Z” isn’t just a passive aggressive swipe at copy editors; it’s the tie between this concept and Nissan’s Z sports cars, the idea being that if you cherished the 240Z or ever lusted after the 370Z, maybe a four-seat variant of the Z line that looks like a half-pint Rally Fighter would catch your fancy?

Ignore the words about this concept having a plug-in hybrid; that’s just auto-show puffery. The Gripz exists to test the desire for a high-riding car that’s wearing the body of a sports car—complete with a 2+2 interior that finished to industrial-grade specs, like a high-end bicycle.

While similar in space to the Nissan Juke, the Gripz is far wider and a touch lower, and its 22-inch wheels give it a far higher stance. The doors swing up scissor-style, and the rear hatch is mostly for show, given the Z-like sharply sloping roof.

A production version would likely have conventional doors, smaller tires, a modicum of rear visibility and some kind of turbocharged power. To Nissan’s credit, there’s not much like the Gripz on the road today; on the other hand, a lot of outré concepts would lose a fatal amount of appeal if they had to conform to real-world realities. The Gripz will not come to a dealer near you soon; but if people talk about it enough, Nissan will, in the best traditions of off-roading, find a better way.