While the concept of trim levels is great for reducing costs on popular items, cost-engineering can occasionally result in manufacturers making things options that probably shouldn’t be optional at such a great cost. Take the Nissan Z, for example. While the Performance trim adds a whole bunch of genuine performance goodies, it also quietly includes a glovebox part that you’ll never see but you’ll definitely notice.
It wasn’t that long ago that you could hop into any compact car, unlatch the glovebox, and have the door plummet open to the end of its stops like Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne Johnson in “The Other Guys,” but those days are largely behind us. Somewhere along the line, automakers decided to start using dampers to make opening glovebox doors seem more premium, and the effect’s remarkably satisfying. Cars with glovebox dampers are pretty normal now, but cars without them are cool too, if it fits the mission. On something rugged like the previous Jeep Wrangler, the lack of a glovebox damper fits its barebones nature. But what about cars with optional glovebox dampers?
If you find your way onto Nissan’s media site page for the Z, click on specs, and scroll down far enough, you’ll see an entry for, um, “Glove compartment dampening”. Specifically, the Performance trim has it, but the base Sport trim doesn’t. As it turns out, this isn’t a feature that turns your insurance card all soggy, but instead a damper that slows the opening of the glovebox.
It’s wild that this is optional on a car that starts at $44,110 including freight, and doubly so that it comes bundled into a $10,000 trim level jump. It’s like how Dodge bundles a front trunk and a glovebox light into a $4,995 option package on the Charger Daytona. The other stuff you get with the Z Performance trim is nice, like big brakes and a mechanical limited-slip differential, but packaging a glovebox damper that way just seems like cost-cutting.
Now, there’s something to be said about simplifying and adding lightness in a sports car, but there’s one big hesitation I’m having — the Nissan Z isn’t especially light. Since it rides on the same FM platform that came under a bunch of Infiniti sedans and crossovers, it weighs in at 3,486 pounds in base trim. A glovebox damper is gonna add what, less than a pound? Sure, it might add some cost too, but this is almost a $45,000 car. Customers probably won’t balk at paying a little bit more to get a glovebox damper.
Thankfully, there may be a way to fix this if you want a base Z but don’t want your glovebox to slam open like it’s straight out of Looney Tunes. According to Nissan’s parts catalog, the glovebox frame is shared between all Z trim levels, which means the glovebox damper itself should fit. Although a new-in-box example of part number 68513-1EA0A is currently on sale for $50.14 through Nissan’s parts portal, you might be able to get one even cheaper from a junkyard because this exact glovebox damper was shared with the 370Z.
So there we are, a potential solution to a problem that realistically, almost nobody will care about until they notice it. If Nissan would simply include a glovebox damper as standard, this wouldn’t be an issue, but here we are. If another similarly egregious example of cost-cutting on a car expensive enough that it should come with a feature as standard comes to mind, I’d love to hear it in the comments below.
Top graphic image: Nissan
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A sub 3500 lb car today is equivalent to a sub 3000 lb car from 20 years ago. Chalk it up to inflation.
Z owner here. I’ve never opened the glovebox to know if the single spec here in AU is dampened or not.
All the books live in their own pocket behind the drivers seat so yeah never needed to open glovebox.
That said even the dealer does not know where the books live so I have to get them out every time.
This reminds of when you were still allowed to go into junkyards and find higher level trims of whatever car and rob it for sweet parts to install back at your own car. It used to be a fun way to spend a weekend.
I feel like cost cutting is the entire story of the new Z
Audi A4 (B9 generation), in the trunk there’s a steel crossmember that is pre-drilled (or pre-stamped) to accept grocery bag hooks. There are two sets of these pre-drilled holes (left and right), but (at least on some model years, and at least in the U.S.) the bean counters decided to only include a single grocery bag hook.
Mitsubishi does it too. Of course our 22 and 24 Outlanders are Nissan underpinned and some of the Nissan shenanigans made it into the cabin of both of our Outties. Every single bulb on both the interior and exterior of our Outties are LED except for the interior dome lighting and the rear turn signal bulbs. The glovebox (dampened) lighting and backlighting for the dash including the surround for the USB ports are all LED. The ceiling lights are incandescent.
I replaced the signal bulbs with LED units and I might do the interior bulb but WTH Mitsubishi.
On the flip side I bought two 2024 Mirages last year as well. Both SE (mid-level) models. My blue SE G4 had all incandescent bulbs but my later built gray SE G4 had all incandescent and listed them as such but the fog lights and FOGLIGHTS ONLY were LED. Not even listed on the window sticker either and both cars were the exact same MSRP.
Weird.
Nissan used to be an actual Toyota competitor back in my youth. They did this to themselves by not getting rid of those problematic CVTs (or their VC engines), their interior plastics that made a VW seem upscale, and refusing to do simple things like offer an off-road package for the Armada/Patrol here in NA to be a LC/4Runner competitor. The fact that they still put CVT’s in their vehicles after all their issues is a slap to the face of any buyer. Nissan deserves to go under.
Nissan didn’t die, Nissan was murdered. An important distinction. Carlos Ghosn is a criminal.
Nissan sucks. Tesla doesn’t seem to want them. And I think they’d have to give Honda their first of kin to get them to consider merging again.
Nissan is a dead man walking. Maybe they can hang out with Dodge and plan a comeback together.
This is much less egregious, but for the model year I have of the Kia Niro, the PHEV came with seat and mirror memory and even the top EV trim does not. This is quite irritating because the body controller is identical, and there is almost no cost difference between the memory and non-memory mirror modules. The biggest difference is that the EV just doesn’t have the buttons on the door.
This irritates me because in my opinion the major benefit of most power seats and mirrors would be the memory. Especially since in this car the power seat has only one greater degree of freedom than the manual seat.
I would say the primary benefit of power seats would be infinite adjustment, rather than having to choose between 2 different cogs in the locking mechanism where your desired positioning is almost always between 2 choices.
Fair enough. I always felt like the notches were enough and it is easier for me to find my preferred setup after someone else drives when there aren’t as many options.
My enthusiasm for the 370Z could not be more dampened.
Why do you have to be such a wet blanket?
I bought a new 2024 Mazda CX-30 Turbo Premium Plus (highest trim level), and the 12v power socket in the center console is nothing but a plug blank. There’s not one in the back hatch area either. As best I can tell, some international markets still had 12v sockets in 2024, but it was removed from all US models.
Despite spending over $40,000 on a new vehicle in 2024, if I want to charge more than 2 devices (and those only via USB-C) I’m out of luck.
I’ve been driving my car for almost 6 years now and can count on 1 hand the number of times I’ve opened the glove box. No idea what’s in it now except any paperwork or manuals the dealer dropped in there. My wife probably has a hairbrush in there somewhere.
Probably over half of the time I open the glovebox is to clean/change the cabin filter, in which case I have to disconnect the damper to drop it all the way out of the way (and dump all the random junk in it onto the floor). I’ve thought about just leaving the damper disconnected to make the process easier, but the connection is chewed up enough at this point that it’s a lot easier to disconnect now
Oh yeah, that cabin air filter…. not on my list of filters to take seriously. Seems kind of silly in a car that I like driving with the windows open.
After nearly a decade daily driving an Elise and then a couple of years in a Europa I’ve managed to get by just fine without a glove box. I open the one in my GT86 maybe once a year, and I don’t know or care about how premium an experience the lowering of that door is.
At least you have the option of the new Z. I liked my old 350Z, although it was a heavy old boat. I replaced it with the 86, and might have replaced that with a new Z if it was available here.
You beat me to it – I want to be outraged at this in principle, but I just can’t. Who uses a glove box enough to even need it “dampened” to start with?
Also, I am in a similar boat to you – I have a 350, and in some years I will be getting something newer. Caymans are quickly becoming unrealistic, but I do like the current gen Toyobarus. However, I just can’t bring myself to consider something so slow. My Z is heavily modified and tuned to around 300whp (the perfect amount of whp), and will skip to 60 in 5 seconds (the perfect amount of skipping) with a basically flat torque curve all the way to its 7k redline. I just don’t think I’d be happy in an 86 or BRZ coming from this. Change my mind!
My main use-case are mirror hang tags such as for CA State Parks or National Parks. Especially if the glove compartment locks. Tire pressure gauge goes in there too, and a couple pens and pepper spray.
The 86 isn’t just slower, it has less grip too. So for a given level of furious driving it feels about the same, you just arrive later.
I found driving the 350Z at the limit was going to end up with prison time. I can hoon the 86 without worrying so much about the police, and it costs less to run too.
My other car does a 5 second 0-60, so that might help me not miss the speed.
It’s funny you say that, my MR2 Spyder is the car I use the glove compartment most in. It locks, so when I park the car with the top down anything loose in the cabin that might be tempting to nab gets locked up in there, mostly my phone charger. It’s not Fort Knox but someone has to do some actual breaking in and can’t just take.
CA State Parks has a policy that if you have a year pass hang tag and have a convertible you can stop on the way in the park and ask them to give you a paper day pass so you can keep your hang tag safe with you or locked up and not just dangling there in arms-reach.
I had one of those MR2s!
I used to keep the hard top on though, because at the time I was shooting every weekend and it was a struggle to fit a rifle in the bins behind the seats.
Couldn’t your rifle ride shotgun?
You have no idea how much the UK public, and police, over-react to seeing a rifle.
I live in coastal California, not Texas or Alabama so I have some idea.
It didn’t used to be this way. I’ve heard stories of people in the ’60s and ’70s open carrying shotguns on public busses going to the local range.
Even with the little panel removed that was meant to allow a golf bag to fit back there? I still wouldn’t want a rifle to be visible in the car, that’s an extreme temptation to thieves and a liability.
I’m envious you had a hard top. Prices shot up the last few years and they are now over $3k if you can find one. Which is almost half the cost of a decent driver’s Spyder.
The target scope is huge. Plus target air rifles are quite long.
I also used the MR2 for going mountain biking: wheels on the passenger seat, the rest of the bike strapped to the engine cover. It looked deeply silly.
The whole car was only £1100, with hardtop. This would have been 2019ish.
Yeah the hard tops are much more reasonable in Europe. They weren’t sold in North America so all of them have been shipped over after the fact.
Well that sucks.
Am I the only one who looks at that illustration of a Nissan Glove Box Damper and sees a tampon?
The way it’s going that’ll be a $1000 option.
I assume BMW would sell a subscription to the damper.
Oh snap
The turn signals are only available in the most expensive trims.
For Sale. BMW turn signals, never used.
Automakers do the weirdest things like this sometimes. It almost certainly costs them MORE to make some with this and some without than to just put the silly thing in all of them.
When I bought my ’11 328i wagon, I added back pretty much everything BMW cost-cut out of the facelifted cars, plus added a couple things that the US never got (like rear fog lights). Cost a few hundred bucks.
The software locking of battery capacity in EVs is maybe the most egregious of cost cutting in modern vehicles. Exact same cost to produce the battery, but they knife the usable range so they don’t have to produce two different batteries, rather than just letting all trim levels enjoy increased range.
Just be glad in the US they thing you OWN the Battery. In China, once you pay the car off they will throttle speed/range because they will squeeze more money stating you “Bought the car, but not the battery.”
In China they also own you as a citizen.
…coming soon to a North American country under you.
Oh I know, that executive order hasn’t reached his desk yet. But I’m sure musk is putting the finishing touches on it.
What EVs do this?
No damper on the glove box door? Dear God, the country is doomed.
Are these even for sale? I’ve never seen one on the road.
I’ve seen one at a dealer and 2 on the road.. I love how they look but they don’t fit my needs or budget at all.
I’ve seen exactly one on the road. Wish it was more popular, it seems pretty cool.
If you see a glovebox damper on the road the car has some serious build-quality problems.
My local Nissan dealership has two. One inside in the showroom next to the Rogue, and one out on the lot. I’ve seen exactly one out on the road driving. It was the charcoal grey one they kept on the lot, running with a magnetic dealer plate and with the list still taped to the passenger side window.
Then again I’ve only ever seen three 370Z Z34s around here in the entire time those were in production, and I never ever saw them on that dealer’s lot. They just don’t seem to order anything other than more Rogues and Armadas. Not even any Altimas anymore.
Just one a few weeks ago. And we have a multitude of toys here on the roads.
In the grand scheme of ‘bean counters fucking with cars,’ I’d say the Mustang retaining a stick axle for half a century might be considered a bigger misstep.
I’ve seen exactly one new Z on the roads in Northern NJ. How much longer will struggling Nissan even continue selling it?
There’s a Nismo Z that was in the showroom when I picked up my Frontier last June. I was there last week, same Nismo in the showroom, same $12,000 market adjustment.
100% Dealers fucked this car and it’s really sad for enthusiasts.
And now it also has a dead battery. 🙂
The drag racers insisted on the stick axle, plus costs. Ford made some independent rear Mustangs over the years.
I have never seen a new Nissan 400Z. It’s honestly something I might buy now that I’m empty nest.
That’s why you don’t see them.
Last Mustang I rented felt gigantic, more like my MN12 TBird. I suspect the same for the Z car. TBH the old Fox body is about right size for this class of car. Wide enough to be stable but still narrow and small overall.
I have a soft spot for Mustangs, but I feel the same whenever I rent one too. HUGE on the outside, but really cramped on the inside. BMW did it so much better with the 2-series, managing to make it feel much smaller but much more usable on the inside at the same time.
Perhaps it’s because I’ve had a few S550s for the last ten years, but I don’t have a problem with the exterior size of the car. It’s all hood, but I find it easier to see over than the Bronco Sports I sell at work.
The 2-series looks fun, but having owned a BMW in the past, I am deathly afraid of the maintenance, not to mention the cost of the car.
In the 14 years I have owned my ’11 328i, the only out of pocket repair has been a battery. Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet, chosen carefully they are very stout cars. Some are very stupid though. Avoid anything with a V-engine, and MOST of them with turbos. And any that was not made in Der Vaterland.
It’s not so much that the Mustang is a large car per se, it’s that the dimensions of the outside are out of proportion to the amount of space inside, and they simply feel larger than they are, rather than shrinking around you as the best cars do.
I guess we got a lemon, then. We bought an ’01 525i used in ’05. In the time we owned the car, the steering angle sensor went bad, the pixels on the radio started disappearing, the plastic coolant lines developed a tiny crack that caused the engine to overheat and the sunroof cassette broke. Twice.
I know used cars aren’t perfect, but it was also the cost of replacement parts that turned me off. As much as I’d love an E39 M5, I probably don’t have enough income to afford the maintenance.
Don’t know what to tell you. I have had six BMWs, currently have two, all gave excellent service with very reasonable cost of ownership. I don’t find the parts to be particularly expensive when they are needed.
I don’t care for the look and feel of their current production, but I would have no qualms about the mechanical reliability of one.
See, I kinda liked the live axle.. in the SN197
I drove a SN95 GT with a live axle and the biggest impression I got was that the steering sucked and the ride quality was worse. I drove a SN95 Cobra with the IRS and the steering still sucked and the ride was even worse.
Then one day around 2012, I got an SN197 as a rental. Baby blue, V6 automatic. Strikes 1, 2 and 3.
And I loved that car. The steering we so much better, the ride wasn’t buck board hard. The engine didn’t overpower the chassis. As I drove it hard around corners, the rear axle didn’t do anything weird. Until I hit some frost heaves mid corner at speed and it sounded like someone had locked a methed out rabbit in the trunk. But it didn’t do anything scary. Just made a lot of noise to remind me that I was pushing it a little too much in a rental on an unfamiliar road.
The biggest thing I liked about that car was something missing from so many cars today. “Character”. Sure that thumping axle was non-optimal, but it showed a personality that not many vehicles have today. I could absolutely see this thing having a nickname from whoever eventually bought it from Avis.
My problem with glove boxes is not that the door opens too fast, its that they don’t close well because I either over fill them with my crap or they are so badly designed that I cannot even fit that fat stack of manuals/warranty/accessory-ads/whatever back in.
That and they open too far sometimes and dump all their crap on the floor.
I’ve encountered this several times in my Prius v already.
Replace the turn signal stalk with the one from a higher trim with the fog light switch, and switch it on–fog light symbol on the dash comes on. (of course, more wiring had to be done under the hood, but still.)
Another fun thing was, the glovebox light was a tiny halogen. I replaced it with the Lexus CT200h equivalent part, which was a cool white LED. Then I found out the top-trim Prius v also had a footwell light for the driver, and I found a molded piece of the plastic holding the receptacle for the light…which was identical to the glove box light. Plugged it in and it just works.
This stuff is really frustrating from the consumer side. Gifting us everything but the important pieces.
This stuff is really frustrating from the consumer side. Gifting us everything but the important pieces.
That’s what the aftermarket and junkyards are for.
For the late e8x/e9x BMWs it was hilarious – literally everything for rear fog lights is there. The button is there in the light switch, the wiring is there, the software is there. But the light switch has little tabs that mean you can’t actually push that button, and of course the switch has no symbol on it. All you have to do is take an X-acto knife to those little tabs and you have rear fog lights, complete with the light-up symbol in the dash. Not knowing this when I bought my 2011 wagon new, I bought a Euro light switch. But that does mean my car has the symbol printed on the button. And when I bought my ’11 128i convertible I cut the tabs on the 328i switch and used it in that car – instant upgrade to the newer style switch with the silver trim. 1-series never got that. But the original 1-series switch was the same, cut the tabs and you have rear fogs.
The early cars were lacking the plastic bit that let the button push the actual switch on the circuit board – but a couple of lego bricks would fix that. The later cars were good to go Completely baffling, especially given most of their competitors did have that feature in the US.
On the other hand, I have an old Sienna CE (cheap edition). We got a pair of front seats from a XLE from a junkyard cheap and I figured I could have power leather seats. Nope. COMPLETELY different wiring. Talked to a Toyota specialist and the entire wiring harness under the carpet in a CE is different than an XLE. Which makes no sense.
Huh. And I guess the wiring harnesses weren’t something one could easily swap either?
But yeah, I would guess this stuff doesn’t apply universally. One feature a relative’s Prius v Five (top trim) has that mine doesn’t is little sprayers for the headlights. Really cool feature, but I imagine retrofitting those requires piping the fluid, some kind of pumps, the extending arms with the sprayers, different bumper with the correct cutouts…not a quick job.
Yeah, sometimes it’s just weird. Not just different wiring harness, different computer for the ABS controller since the wiring connects to it as well. etc. etc. etc. Why Toyota developed different parts there instead of plugging off the connections to power seat controls, I haven’t a clue.
I was all about getting one of these until I discovered it only weighs 200 lbs less than my 2010 Challenger R/T, which lists at 4,050 lbs.
Instead I kept the Challenger and got a 2008 Mazda RX-8 for when I’m feeling like driving a sports car. When I had my first RX-8 I was disconcerted by it sitting higher than my old RX-7s. Just yesterday, I pulled up next to a Toyota GT86 and found that I was sitting lower than the Toyota driver, and the beltline was lower, too. The Miata is probably the only non-exotic new car that sits as low or lower than the RX-8. Maybe the Corvette, too.
The article is wrong about the weight. The car weighs about 3,300 lbs. A truck stop scale confirms this.
Is it? I’ve seen these published by every other publication as well.
Y’wanna know something wild, a Toyota Tercel and Mazda Protege both have you sit lower than the current J29 Supra. They did that so that you’d have more legroom with the tilt of the seat cushions.
Modern cars have you sit more like you’re in a chair while older cars have you sit more like you’re in a deck lounger.
As a person involved in designing helicopter lead lag dampers, it drives me crazy when people incorrectly call a damper, a dampener.
The Nissan part number correctly calls this a damper, the first paragraph of this article incorrectly says dampener. To dampen something is to make it wet. The correct term is to damp.
Pampers get damper
Thank you. Thomas alludes to this with the soggy insurance card bit. It’s really irritating.
I’m feeling moist.
Nissan doing Nissan things. I think there is an internal metric at Nissan, where the higher trim needs x number of features more than the lower trim. I found Nissan doing this on the Ariya too, example: passenger side mirror tilting down on reverse, not available on the lowest trim. I don’t even think this requires hardware, but simply software coding. Just remove that coding and it now counts as a feature.