Alfonso Albaisa

As the new Z Proto was revealed (page 14), we interviewed Nissan Motor design boss Alfonso Albaisa, who has spent his entire career at Nissan and oversees design for the Nissan, Infiniti, and Datsun brands.

What are a few of the elements that you feel capture the Z identity? I use “memory” instead of “retro” because it’s an important difference. Because when a car is 50 years old and you’re designing in the modern era, I think it’s more healthy to use memory than [to be completely] literal. There are a few things that are very much an example of that—the posture in the centerline of the car. Yes, it’s 240Z to your memory. But actually the gesture, the hood, and the power is very much of the modern era. Its stance is very wide, very low, much lower feeling. The rear edge of the car is lower than the fender—which the 240Z, even 260Z and 280Z, did not have. We really, really worked with engineering: How can we get this balance right?