I’ll start with the Porsche 997, the 996 looked alright imo, but it looks “like a 90s Porsche”, the 997 made it look sleeker and more modern. Still looks good today.
As for cars that looked worse after a facelift? Maybe the facelifted 6th gen Camaro? The 6th gen looked great pre-facelift, but they did something weird with the headlights and now it looks so-so…
I’m even one of them myself to a degree, but if you looked anything past a Reddit comment it’s pretty evident the 370z was a major change.
In the G35 -> G37 it was an even more noticeable change as there was a serious effort to deliver a proper interior. Early model G35’s rattled out of the showroom like a 15-year old Chrysler.
The G37 felt like the only time that brand was truly competitive to the European brand comparables. G35 was their first swing, G37 felt like a hit, and Q50 was a bunt
How do you like your M2 comp? A friend of mine not long ago got a 6MT F80 comp, and had M2 comp on their shortlist too. Ended up blowing his budget (and some) on a can’t say no deal for that F80.
It’s funny, i was never a huge fan of the G37, but they’ve been really growing on me recently. I always thought both the 350Z and the G35 were better looking than the G37/370Z, but stepping up their game in refinement speaks to me more these days now that i’m older.
I have a friend who bought an IPL new with a six-speed (and got a great deal on it.) I think his intention was to keep it around long term which feels like a pretty good choice. It offers a lot of stuff that is getting harder and harder to find.
The M2 Comp is pretty great! I’ve had it for more than 4 years and 30K miles. It’s my daily and replaced my old 350Z. I owned both cars for a short while and it was a really interesting experience driving them back-to-back.
The M2 Comp is obviously much faster in a straight line, it’ll easily out grip the Nissan and it turns in way faster…but I have to give Nissan’s engineers credit: it feels like the Z had more travel and felt as though it was inherently working with a lower center of gravity. Some of it may be the seating position too, which is lower and further back in the Z.
The beauty of the M2 is it’s rear diff. It’ll let you slide, but more importantly be nice and progressive when regaining grip when ending that slide. The car does always want to be sideways though, that’s just kind of its personality.
Downsides are the ride quality which is just barely on the right side of “i’ll tolerate it” and the gas tank. Oh man, i miss that big old gas tank in the Nissan. The BMW has a 13.2 gallon tank and has 405 hp. I live at the gas station.
On the other hand, it makes an absurdly practical car for the city. Great visibility, easy to park, a nice big trunk, back seats you can put people in, the list goes on.