Nissan’s North American VP, Pierre Loing, said the retro-inspired IDx concept car shown at the 2013 Tokyo Motor Show will stay a show car and won’t go into production. That comes as bad news to the many people who were looking forward to the prospect of a small, affordable rear-wheel drive sports car from Nissan.

That was one of the larger factors for Nissan’s decision not to produce the IDx, developing a brand-new rear-wheel drive platform for a low-volume sports car was not financially viable. Using an existing Nissan platform also wouldn’t have worked as the rear-wheel drive Z platform was suited to a larger engine, a production IDx would be powered by a four-pot. Front-wheel drive would’ve been out of the question as it’d ruin aesthetics, not to mention disappoint many petrolheads.

2013-nissan-idx-concept-3

Of course some of you may point at Toyota and Subaru’s decision to produce the 86/BRZ, but Toyota is a bigger and wealthier company than Nissan so they were able to make a case for a low-volume sports car, but even then required the help from Subaru. Perhaps Nissan needs to team up with someone else, surely Renault or Alpine could do with a rear-wheel drive coupe too?

That said, Nissan haven’t completely ruled out a return to the small coupe market. It just won’t be an IDx. But that still leaves the door open for the return of the Silvia/SX nameplate, which would certainly make more people happier. Now that the majority of Japanese car manufacturers are starting to churn out sportier vehicles it’s only a matter of time before the rest of them (Mitsubishi) start to follow suit.

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Ken Saito
Words cannot begin to describe how much I love cars but it's worth a try. Grew up obsessed with them and want to pursue a career writing about them. Anything from small city cars to the most exotic of supercars will catch my attention.

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