At the 1983 Tokyo Motor Show the star of Nissan’s booth was a prediction of what an 21st century sedan might look like. Its hopes were right there in the experimental saloon’s name, the Nissan NX-21. As we know now from actually living in the 21st century that this future never came to be. In fact, with Nissan reportedly about to kill off almost all its sedan offerings in the US, this may be a good time to reflect on the misplaced optimism we once had.
Long, low, and luxurious, the NX-21 had an extended wheelbase of 2985 mm (117.5 inches), the same as a 1990s Lincoln Continental. However, its roof rose to just 1280 mm (50.3 inches), over an inch shorter than a Toyota 86’s.
Cabin access was provided by a pair of gargantuan gull-wing doors, which lifted to expose an aperture wide enough for passengers to climb into either row. Front seats even swiveled for easier ingress and egress.
The NX-21 employed a rear-engine, rear-wheel-drive layout, with Nissan making some rather outrageous claims about its powerplant. Not only was it a gas turbine, it used ceramics in its construction and could run on petrol, diesel, alcohol, or kerosene.
Of course this was just concept car fluff, as the “engine” was really just a placeholder and didn’t actually function. Oddly enough, while Nissan wasn’t shy about assertions of fuel type, it did come up with a surprisingly modest horsepower figure of just 100 ps (97 hp).
A number of the NX-21’s styling cues went on to find homes in production Nissans. The flush, wedge-shaped headlights are reminiscent of the Z32 300ZX’s, the taillights appeared to have served as inspiration for the Pulsar EXA, and the floating steering wheel eventually found its way into the Gloria. The window-in-window side glass recalls the Subaru SVX as well.
Some of its interior features are starting to become standard on cars today. The gear selector was’t a lever but a series of confusing buttons. The rear view mirror wasn’t a mirror at all but a rear-mounted camera that projected its view onto a dash-mounted screen. Presciently, the car’s controls were accessed via icons on a touchscreen, something that is tragically all too common these days.
The NX-21 may have gotten some of the finer details right, the bigger idea of people from the 2020s wanting to ride around in low-slung sedans could not have been more wrong. Several mainstream car companies — Ford, GM — aren’t even offering sedans any more. But the NX-21 wasn’t a case of Japan not being able to forecast American trends. Its creation was led by ex-GM designer Tom Semple at Nissan’s La Jolla, California studio, which was set up specifically to predict where the US market was going.
We’re not exactly being fair to the NX-21 though, as the whims of consumers are hard to anticipate. No one back in 1983 would have taken the bet that we’d all be zipping around in SUVs and crossovers with the classic three-box shape on the verge of extinction. Nissan was one of the last holdouts for the sedan form, with no less than four in the lineup as recently as last year. However, the Maxima was discontinued at the end of 2023 and, if the reports are true, the Versa and Altima will soon follow due to poor sales. Only Sentra will remain. The NX-21 foretold a future that was never to be, and we are poorer for it.
But they were right about flush mounted headlights, glass, ultra slim lights and having no bumpers.
I see hints of Citroen in the profile, Subaru in the window arrangement … seems like the future had some ideas that were universally seen.
Am I the only one who sees many parallels between the NX-21 and the Hyundai Ioniq 6? Both are sedans, both have a wedge shaped frontend, both have a short nose, both have similar headlight design, both have a large glasshouse for the passengers. How much did Hyundai pay to Nissan for this design? 😉
Art, I thought the same parallel between cars. I can see it for sure.
@Fashion Victim I love the comment about the bumpers…why did we suffer through the 80’s with still, huge bumper beams if todays so called “cars” don’t adhere to the whims of insurance companies? I mean, tear off a fascia these days and it will cost thousands if not tens to replace all the sensors…
Anyway, let’s look at it this way. This is 1983! It is a concept to push the limits of thinking.
This car had:
Alternate power unit
Aerodynamic shape and influence
Gull wing doors like the Tesla has today
Camera(s)
Screen(s)
Dual exhaust pipes (jeez is this ever overdone today)
Hypermiler tire profile
I think not bad for 1983, before we ever had the performance re-revolution!
Amen Brotha
Design-wise, there is a lot of right prediction made by this car, and the most surprising to me is that it came before the Ford Taurus! The same kind of aerodynamic-ish curved edge and details that made it shatter the old american design style are seen on this Nissan.
It is funny to see “only 100hp”, but I guess they predicted huge progess in aerodynamics and lightweight material, announcing that in this era of environmental friendlyness, a car will not need power and as such a car will not need lots of fuel! But the layout is strange, long, low and sleek always remind me of the Citroen DS, and a rear-engined arrangement reminds us of low-bucks cars like the Beetle, Fiat 500 and lots of very small euro cars, why predict that for a big sedan? Where is the cargo space?
And with this push-button transmission, where is my cupholder?
Why do you have to consume and drive? There are solid arguments, provided by the a**holes surrounding you on the road for « just » driving your car. It is utterly risible to look at car specs and deem cup holders necessary while custodian of a wheeled missile that handles at worst competently. Cupholders belong in the armrests of lounge chairs for the obese or the aged, not in our cars. Car companies convinced us in the late fifties that the center console was a good idea, that the bench seat was for your old man. Buckets and a center console for the young man about town.. The only problem being that when you were on the way to second base the shift lever did for your manhood! Center console contraception ended the baby boom before economics.. Now the car is an extension of the condo, somewhere to wait for the inevitable one traffic jam at a time.
I get that advertising a car as having 9 cupholders as a selling point is ridiculous, but if they were superfluous, they would have gone extinct. Plus, it was a jab on the fact that cupholders became common after the introduction of the Dodge Caravan a year later.
But now it is story time, when I started my career years ago, I spent a year working and living about 10 hours away from my family and girlfriend. Just 2 and a half hours of highway, the rest are backroads. When I could affort a five days weekend, that means one day to drive home, three weekend days and then another day to go back where I lived, I always did the drive in one go, apart from bio stops and gas stops. I cannot live 10 hours, not even 2, without drinking and throwing water bottles around the passenger seat, floor or losing them behind in a 2+2 gets old quickly in a moose area.
Fifteen years forward, my nostalgic car, a sporty roadster, does not have any cupholder and will never have them, I even ripped out the radio right when I bought it! But this article is about the idea of the future big sedan probably aimed at a family, young or old, and people that might have to travel to see family and do not want a bio stop every hour to find a drinking fountain.
Risible, right?
That is 100x cooler looking thatn pretty much every modern sedan
Gorgeous piece of design.
With the imminent departure of the Altima, what will future low-information/credit score hood rats of the world drive?
Rogues, or the Kicks which is being upsized to where the old Rogue Sport was in the line.
What it is, is a KN13 EXA/Pulsar NX. Just chop a couple of feet out of the middle, and there you are…
Rear-engine gas turbine was an interesting choice for the fictional powerplant, since both were technologies that peaked in the 1960s and well on their way out by ’83 (the turbine having never seen production), especially since Nissan had just spent years and millions going FWD.
Push button AT selector was also backward-looking in context since both Chrysler (for years) and Ford (only in the ’58 Edsel) had put them into production long before.
1383 was the year before Chrysler’s T115 minivans and the Jeep Cherokee XJ hit the streets, kicking off the swing to taller cars that’s now full-blown taken over the industry.