Nissan is already planning the architecture of the Modern Silvia

It was back in July that Ivan Espinosa, Nissan's head of global product strategy, said that the company was building a business case for launching a modern Silvia as its third sports car after the Z and GT-R.

And now he has revealed to Australian media, including Drive, that Nissan is already planning the architecture for the car.

“We've been doing some very early upstream exercises on what the architecture could look like,” he said. To have enough scale, we need to find something that works globally.”

Espinosa said that electrifying a car requires significant investment, which is proving difficult at this point. One possibility, he said, would be to share car technology with other members of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance to increase economies of scale.

Despite the positive tone, Espinosa said it remains to be seen if the project will get the go-ahead, but if it does, he would like to see it launched within 10 years.

The Silvia has traditionally been Nissan's entry-level sports car. Last sold in the U.S. as the 240SX in the 1990s, Nissan discontinued the model worldwide in 2002.

Rumors of a Silvia revival date back to when the last Silvia was discontinued. They were also rekindled in 2021 when European Nissan designers released design sketches of an electric Silvia concept.

A major hurdle for the Silvia is that Nissan will need to invest in a new GT-R as well. The current R35 generation will end with the 2024 model year, and Nissan said a successor will follow, albeit perhaps with a gap of a few years.