2003 Nissan 350Z Article at Automotive.com

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Nissan 350Z Movie The Run

Below is an enthusiast article written by the automotive experts at Sport Compact Car. In Claude Lelouch's classic short film "Rendezvous," a Ferrari blasts through Paris on an early Sunday morning with a camera bolted to its hood. At the end, after nine plus minutes of near misses and big rpm downshifts, the Ferrari stops at the feet of a waiting, beautiful woman.

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IntelliChoice Value Rating

The chart above shows the purchase price versus ownership cost for each car from a specific vehicle class. The cars with better than average ownership cost/purchase price correlations are the best values, and these best value cars are represented by the dots below the curve. (i.e. the cars that have a lower ownership cost compared to its purchase price.) Those cars, which are worse than average or poor values, appear above the curve.

One way to view the graph is to draw a vertical line through any purchase price. You may see several dots that fall on this line - each of which is a car with a similar purchase price. However, notice the difference in ownership costs of each car represented by the vertical position of the dot. Two cars with the same purchase price can have thousands of dollars difference in ownership costs. This is what separates "good value" cars from "poor value" cars.

What is a good car value?

A "good car value" is one whose cost to own and operate is less than expected. The lower the cost to own and operate a car compared to what is expected, the better the value of that car.

But how do we know a car's "expected cost"?

For each car in the class, IntelliChoice plots the car's purchase price against the total five-year cost to own and operate it as determined by IntelliChoice research. Each dot on the above chart represents a specific car. Generally, we find that as the purchase price of the car increases, the cost to own and operate that car increases. This is why the dots on the graph tend to rise upward and to the right. This phenomenon also makes intuitive sense - as the purchase price rises, financing costs tend to rise, as do insurance, depreciation, taxes, and most other car ownership costs.

This is an important concept. It's normal for car ownership costs to rise as purchase price rises. Therefore, we can't just establish one "average" ownership cost number for each class, since cars in the class have different purchase prices. (This is why the "Relative" shown on each chart is different for cars in the same car class.)

Using statistical techniques, IntelliChoice "connects the dots" to form a curve that defines, for this car class, the relationship between the car's purchase price and car's ownership costs. This curve is our "expected cost" curve. The curve defines, for any car in the class, the five-year ownership cost that we would expect to see at each possible purchase price. If every car in the class were an average value, then all the dots would fall exactly on the curve. However, it's rare that any dot is exactly on the curve. Some dots are a little higher or lower, and some are a lot higher or lower. The dots that are a little lower are better than average car values, while the dots that are a lot lower are excellent car values (A dot that is a lot lower than the curve has ownership costs much lower than expected for a car of its purchase price). Conversely, a dot a little higher than the curve is a poorer than average car value, while a dot that is much higher than the curve is a poor car value.

Value is a relative term, not an absolute term. It is performing better than the logical expectation.

So is a Mercedes-Benz E320 expensive to own and operate? Certainly in an absolute sense. Most other cars cost less. But, when its cost to own and operate is plotted against cars with comparable invoice prices, the E320 costs less. So the E320 is not expensive to own and operate - it is a good car value. The Mercedes does not have low ownership costs, but it has low ownership costs for its invoice price.

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Article From Sport Compact Car Magazine

Nissan 350Z Movie The Run - DVD Review

Nissan Makes Its Own Car Movie / Article provided by: Sport Compact Car Magazine

In Claude Lelouch's classic short film "Rendezvous," a Ferrari blasts through Paris on an early Sunday morning with a camera bolted to its hood. At the end, after nine plus minutes of near misses and big rpm downshifts, the Ferrari stops at the feet of a waiting, beautiful woman.

Someone at Nissan likes "Rendezvous." In Nissan's own short, "The Run," a 350Z track model rips through the Czech Republic's beautiful, preserved capitol city of Prague. And, yes, it too ends with a waiting hottie.

As a film, "The Run" is OK. But as a DVD package, it's much better.

Directed by John Bruno, who won an Oscar for the visual effects in "The Abyss," The Run's editing among 14 different cameras works against it. The cuts from a camera aboard the car to a camera in a leading or following car and to stationary or helicopter cameras effectively diminish the sensation of speed. It's impressive Nissan was able to talk the city of Prague into letting it shut down all that road and hire enough people to ensure no civilian wandered out in front of a speeding Z-car, but the illusion of sheer velocity often fades away.

However, the DVD also features unedited footage as part of the "Choose Your Own View" feature in the "Z Extras" portion of the disc, and that footage is far more in line with the spirit of Lelouch's original. It's raw, it's exciting and the Z-car seems to be going really, really fast.

"We spent 12 days in Prague slowly figuring out the 5.7-mile route," explains veteran stunt coordinator Steve Davison, whose car movie credentials includes films like 1985's "To Live and Die In L.A." "We made a pre-run in a police car with motorcycle cops as escort. Our plan was to make practice runs on Thursday and Friday and then shoot on Saturday and Sunday." While they got the Thursday practice in, it so thoroughly screwed up traffic around Prague, they diplomatically skipped the Friday run.

There's only one Z on the screen at any time in "The Run," but three cars were assigned to the production; two equipped with six-speed manuals and one with the five-speed automatic. All were painted in "Le Mans Sunset" and carried the track model's oversize Brembo brakes. During the six different runs made through Prague, the SRS airbags were disconnected from the cars, the Vehicle Dynamic Control system was turned off, the drivers wore five-point harnesses, and supplemental air bags were added to the rear suspension to compensate for camera weight.

"We had a Mercedes camera car but it couldn't keep up," says Davison. "So we used the other Zs as camera platforms. All the car-to-car shots were, in fact, shot Z-to-Z." That's one Z with stuntman Jimmy Roberts piloting and the other with Davison at the wheel.

"We hit about 130 mph along the river and 100 going over the bridge. But we were down to only 15 or 20 mph on the tight corners through the cobblestone streets. We think we ran the whole thing in under six minutes, even though the DVD shows the runs being longer. We're convinced we did it in under six at least once."

Six continuous runs through Prague were made to film the DVD. The three on Saturday included one single car run for helicopter shots and single car runs for exterior shots. All of Sunday was used to generate point-of-view shots with two Z cars chasing and filming each other. It took more than 400 people, including 150 Czech police officers, to secure the course during all of the runs. "In a normal feature film, a chase would be filmed in sections with about two weeks to cover each section," explains Davison. "This was just one fast ride." The drivers were concerned about civilian safety, but there were no accidents during the filming and all the cars emerged undamaged.

The DVD is available at Nissan dealers and on Nissan's special Web site, www.Z.com, for $9.95, and it's worth it. But if all you do is watch the film itself, you'll miss the real excitement embedded in the extras. Beyond the raw footage are excellent commentaries from Davison and Roberts, a brief documentary on the making of the film (but little about the cars actually used), and of course, there's plenty about the 350Z itself since, naturally, Nissan would like it if you bought one-or a dozen.

Nissan did its blast through Prague legally, but DVDs of illegal runs through cities (such as the "Getaway In Stockholm" series) are becoming more common all the time. Seeing the preparation that went into Nissan's "The Run," puts the insanity of those outlaw efforts into perspective.