"Betty" the Z31
“RIGHT DOOR IS OPEN…. RIGHT DOOR IS OPEN…”
“She’s making fun of me!”
An icy glare pierced me from the passenger seat of my 1986 300ZX as the car’s voice warning system chastised my girlfriend (at the time) for leaving the door only partially latched.
To be fair, I deserved it. I saw the warning light on the dash, but said nothing as we set off and exceeded the 10mph or so speed that would trigger the vocalization. I knew what was coming.
“So mean!!”
The frosty tension lingered for a traffic lights, but eventually subsided. “Bitchin’ Betty”, as she is affectionately known by Z31 owners, had claimed another victim.
The voice warning system in the Z31 (1984-1988) 300ZX is actually a rather nice crystallization of the personality of the 3rd generation Z car. It was ambitious and advanced for the time, yet relied on the ingenious exploitation of older technologies that were approaching their sunset. It had ground breaking features that made a splash in ’84, but became rapidly dated and were jettisoned as the industry hurtled towards the technological maturity of the 1990’s. One needs only to open the hood to gaze upon the maze of hoses and wires that make this masterpiece tick to get the point. It was, with few exceptions, a thoughtfully-designed car that did many things very very well, but nothing to absolute perfection. It is also a time capsule (just read on and I’ll tell you about the cigarette shelf). The Z31 is loved by many, panned by a few, and generally considered the “redheaded stepchild” of the Z family with a devoted cult following. Count me in, where’s the kool-aid?
Betty was my first Z, my first sports car, the best daily driver I have ever had, and I loved every minute …even when I was elbow deep in an oil change, cursing up a storm as the inevitable flood of filthy 10w-40 from the incomprehensibly placed oil filter cascaded over the starter, through the catch rag, and onto me and the pavement. If you own one, you know what I am talking about.
As flaws go, though, it’s a small price to pay. The Z31 is comfortable but purposeful, stylish yet substantive, spirited, durable, and practical. Mine had 30 years and well over 200,000 miles on it when I sold it, and Betty’s nagging protestations hadn’t weakened in the slightest on our last day together.
This was the first Z with a V6 power plant and a turbo option at launch – both features which endure to this day on the latest incarnation. The digital dash and the voice warning system wouldn’t survive into the next generation Z32, but they were novel at the time and showed that Nissan could innovate and try something new in an era of wild experimentation. One could argue that the digital dash was simply ahead of its time and is back in a big way on the new iteration.
Mine had an analog dash that I found to be simple, attractive, and supremely legible day or night, and even in analog form there were a few innovations. The fuel gauge was a compound affair with a secondary mini-gauge, inside of which a second, smaller needle would appear when the voluminous 20-gallon tank was down to its final quarter. This magnified gauge made it very easy to tell as your remaining dino juice sank to an 1/8th , a 1/16th etc. and even still a flashing light and one of Betty’s verbal warnings would make themselves known as you got down to fumes. I rarely tempted her admonitions and the outsize tank made it easy not to.
I have great memories of cruising to Vegas and back on nearly a single tank, taking a spirited midnight run up to Big Bear through the twisty mountain cliffs for a ski weekend with friends, packing the hatch before a gig with two guitars, an amplifier and a bag of pedals - still having room for a passenger, and many a comfy air-conditioned commute, bopping along to the sound of the plucky V6 and some good music on the original radio.
I haven’t even gotten to the sleepily seductive half-open pop-up headlights or multiple people on multiple occasions mistaking it for a DeLorean “Whoa, sick… is that the Back to the Future car?”. Betty was a sandy metallic gray, so I kind of get it? They don’t make cars that look like this anymore and they never will again.
At the risk of rambling on, I will leave you with two more things that you will never see on another car, ever again.
1.) The voice warning system was not a transistorized digital recording as you might have thought. There were five different messages recorded onto five tiny vinyl records, entombed in a small box in the passenger footwell. Sensors on the car would trigger one of the five warnings and a tiny phonograph arm with a tiny needle would select the appropriate tiny record with the desired message, which would then play through the stereo speakers, whether the radio was on or not. On top of all this, somehow they managed to skip-proof it!
details here for the curious:
http://www.xenonzcar.com/z31/voicewarningsystem.php
2.) Behind the gearshift and in front of the armrest console, there is a rectangular sunken shelf. This shelf is a very particular shape and size and has a lip all the way around with a slanting profile that rises at the back. This shelf is EXACTLY the size of a standard American pack of cigarettes. …such that they are securely close at hand even under the most extreme driving conditions, and immediately accessible should you need a one way ticket to Marlboro country.
Purposeful engineering at its finest.
Betty outlasted more than one girlfriend, and she never left me stranded.
Andy K., Group Z
July 11, 2024
If you've made it this far and find yourself wanting more, check out these deliciously-dated TV commercials: