Nissan Is Getting Serious About Bringing the Silvia Back
If you're a pessimist, the news that Nissan is cutting 11 models as part of a turnaround plan might sound desperate, but if you see the glass as half full, doing so allows the automaker to work on interesting vehicles like the new Xterra and the new Skyline. And they may not be the only exciting developments in the pipeline because Nissan told numerous media outlets that it is taking seriously the idea of a proper sports car lineup that could bring the Silvia back to complement the Nissan Z and the next GT-R.
Nissan CEO Ivan Espinosa is described as "a real car guy," and he's indicated a desire to revive the Silvia nameplate before, but now, the carmaker's chief of product planning is teasing its return, and that's arguably even more of a big deal because it means Nissan is on the path to more sports cars, not just thinking about it.
Why Nissan Is Creating a Buzz With Sports Car Enthusiasts
Nissan seems to understand what car enthusiasts want, finally giving the Z Nismo a manual transmission, and it intends to build on that momentum, with the company's global head of product strategy, Richard Candler, telling Motor1the following:
"We are really deeply looking at a sports lineup again. We want to do some cool cars. The first car I ever bought was a Silvia, so I'd love to bring back that nameplate. I do think it's really valuable... I think there's still space for Silvia, and we need to find the right solution for it."
Similarly, The Drive reports that Candler said the announcement of the Skyline "has been a big passion product for [Nissan]," adding that, with the new Z and now a Skyline on the way, Nissan is "[starting] to bring back a good lineup."
The tricky bit will be developing a sports car that stays true to the Silvia's ethos of fun and affordability (potentially as a Toyota GR86 and Mazda MX-5 Miata rival), and those two things are difficult to put together. "We need to find the right positioning," said Candler, before hinting that more enthusiast-focused cars could find their way to production.
Nissan Has Strong Back Catalog, Could Launch Smaller-than-Silvia Sports Car
"In terms of the rest of the sports car lineup, we've got some pretty great names that we would like to develop further," said Candler. Besides all the obvious Z variants (240Z, 260Z, 280Z), there have been RS, GT, GT-X, GTS, and GTS-R versions of the non-GT-R Skyline, but the 300ZX is also worth mentioning independently, as this took the Z badge to new levels of performance and luxury. We should also note the Datsun SSS, an icon in its own right. Indeed, Nissan has a rich history from which to draw, and it is preparing to leverage that.
"We're going to shrink our portfolio a bit. We're going to stop cars that you probably won't even notice and then reinvest that money into a few passion projects," said Candler, adding, "All of those cars [we are going to kill] consume money, for the company to keep them on, to keep them going, keep them homologated, latest requirements, standards, etc. That takes up a certain amount of resources. We could sort of stop those without a lot of business impact and then bring in, you know, let's invest in the Silvia or let's invest in something even smaller. I mean, I've also got an ambition personally to find something maybe even smaller than that." We hope to see the fruits of these ambitions soon.
Note: The images in this article are AI-generated renders and should not be considered official Kia concepts.
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This story was originally published April 18, 2026 at 5:15 AM.