Findings from my focus group study with Nissan

[initialgemini]

I just wanted to share what I found out with my focus group with Nissan yesterday.

So I went in, and they asked a bunch of opinion questions, such as what I liked about the exterior, interior, performance, etc. I mentioned all the little complaints that i could remember on this forum.

I did get an interesting response about the oil temperature. They are well aware that the oil gets hot. They also know that this was a problem with the last Z; and to remedy this, they put in a safety feature "limp mode" to prevent the oil temp from going too high. (In limp mode your revs are limited to 5K) One of the fellows who was interviewing me knows this first hand, he was driving around a red Z and said that he could not get the car into limp mode on the streets in 110 degree weather in phoenix.

He did acknowledge that on the track on a hot day the Z can only last a couple of minutes before the temperature gets too hot. He accounted the lack of an oil cooler to decrease overall production costs of the vehicle.

They did ask me, "If an oil cooler option was available by nissan that does not void your warranty, what quality would expect of it, and how much would you be willing to pay for it." So who knows, maybe an oil cooler option will be available in the near future.

[ChrisSlicks]

Interesting.

I like how they point to the "limp mode" as a solution to the known problem. It is true that under normal driving you will never achieve limp mode no matter how hot it is outside, but if you drive it like you stole it then it isn't hard to get there. At least they are entertaining the idea of an oil cooler option, which is what we've been asking for all along.