A Modern Silvia Could Become a Reality, Nissan Executives Say

With the GT-R soon to be discontinued and no successor in sight, Nissan's sports car lineup will soon consist solely of the Z.

However, the Z is outside the regulatory bounds in Europe and several countries outside the region, and with the GT-R being discontinued, Nissan will soon have little to attract performance fans in these markets.

A solution may be a modern-day Silvia, Nissan's traditional entry-level sports car, which was last sold in the United States in the 1990s as the 240SX. Nissan ended global sales of the Silvia in 2002.

In an interview with Top Gear published Monday, Ivan Espinosa, Nissan's head of global product strategy, said that with a business case, a modern Silvia is possible.

Espinosa said the car needs to be sold globally to be successful and that there are many Silvia fans despite the fact that the Silvia nameplate has not been produced in over 20 years.

In a past interview with Top Gear, published last year, Espinoza said Nissan was considering an entry-level performance model and wanted it to be a proper sports car, not just a hot hatch.

Rumors of a Silvia revival date back to when the last Silvia went out of production, and in 2021 Nissan designers in Europe released several design sketches of their vision of a battery-powered modern Silvia.

It is not clear whether the modern Silvia will be battery-powered or stick with a gas engine, but Nissan has recently rolled out several electric sports car concepts. One of these is the Max Out Roadster. In an interview with Motor Authority in 2022, Nissan design chief Alfonso Albaisa hinted at the possibility of an electric convertible sports car, albeit under the name Fairlady, which Nissan's Z sports cars have occasionally used.