Originally Posted by SMJane_Again

Yeah, I think Nissan realized they had bitten off more than they could chew on the weight aspect. The engineers got painted into a corner when it came out that Nissan was looking for a smaller, lighter car, yet have the same amount of interior space (in fact, if you look at the specs you see it's slightly larger in some dimensions). Take into account a slightly larger engine and you get the size and weight of the car Nissan has given us. Not a bad thing really, since we still got better than a 1/10 power/weight ratio, but it's not the 200 lb diet that was first speculated on.

S.