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Nissan’s executive team is wasting no time, and the automaker’s President and CEO Ivan Espinosa was resolute in April when he told The Drive, “Nissan is back.” The turnaround plan to cut models and keep the good stuff sounds good, but the company is in dire straits and needs to execute. The desire within the automaker’s executive team to be exciting again should ignite enthusiasts, but not everyone is an enthusiast.
On Wednesday, in an exclusive interview with The Drive, Senior Vice President and Chief Planning Officer for Nissan North America, Ponz Pandikuthira said, “there will be subtle nods to the heritage” when discussing the design of the automaker’s future product.
The new Nissan Leaf distinctly leans on design cues from the Z32 300ZX just as the current Z does, but not all heritage nods will be as distinct. Pandikuthira said, “For me it’s a subtle nod that goes throughout the lineup. At some point, you want customers to perceive there’s something that’s finer about the design of vehicles coming out of this brand. That’s the message you want them to go to. You don’t want to beat them over their head.”
Giving credit to the German automakers for successfully executing on this topic, Pandikuthira said, “If you’re true to your origins, your heritage, or, you know, the stuff that gave you credibility from how long you’ve been doing this, it just gives a level of consistency over time, and customers recognize that. So there’s people who will tell you they sit in a certain German car and it smells a certain way because they’ve sourced their leather from the same type of source with the same type of treatment for the last 30 years. The people get into that car and go, this just smells like a BMW too. And we want them to do that.”
The goal with future products? According to Pandikuthira, “They [customers] get in here, they touch certain elements, there’s elements on the steering wheel that you’ll run your thumbs over and you’ll like, this is familiar. I like how this feels. It’s just more special than other cars that I drive. And oh, by the way, when I move through the lineup, and get first a Sentra, then a Rogue, and then maybe a Pathfinder. I feel that lineage going through. That’s the intent. So if we do this being true to our origins, which is Japanese, we think it’s a cool touch.”
Nissan
Looking back in time at Nissan’s origins is already playing out in showrooms. For the 2026 Z, Nissan revived a Heritage Edition that tugged at enthusiasts’ heartstrings. Then a 2027 Z refresh debuted and addressed the Internet’s criticisms while riffing off the original 240Z’s front bumper design. And while a Z Convertible hasn’t been revived yet, Pandikuthira told The Drive in April, “I would like nothing more.”
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Nissan Xterra teasers (top) and 2027 Nissan Rogue Hybrid (bottom)
Nissan teased the upcoming Xterra and its throwback design cues, including a chiseled exterior with an old-school SUV profile. We’ve seen, and even driven in prototype form, the new Rogue Hybrid, though full details surrounding the new model have not been released yet.
It’s not just new products that Pandikuthira wants enthusiasts to feel the automaker’s heritage through. Nissan North America’s boss told The Drive in April that the automaker is getting back into the heritage parts business. At the time, it was revealed that a motorsports-bred executive was already in place and tasked with bringing heritage parts, restomod kits, and backdating programs to an industrial scale within six to 12 months.
The GT-R is Nissan’s north star. In April, Espinosa told The Drive, “We are actually working already on the GT-R” after Pandikuthira said the next iteration of Godzilla will be a hybrid, keep the VR38 block, and arrive by 2030.
Leaning into design heritage with the Z and the GT-R isn’t a hard task. How Nissan chooses to give subtle nods to its history in more mainstream vehicles like the Rogue, Sentra, and the rest of the lineup is yet to be seen. But the Leaf wasn’t a one-off choice; it was a precursor of what’s to come.
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As Director of Content and Product, Joel draws on over 15 years of newsroom experience and inability to actually stop working to help ensure The Drive shapes the future of automotive media. He’s also a World Car Award juror.
