Earlier in September, Nissan expanded a recall covering more than 200,000 Titan and Frontier pickups relating to a roll away risk in their Jatco nine-speed automatic transmission. You know what other Nissan product shares that slushbox? The new Z. Inevitably, the sharp little coupe has been issued a stop sale, too.
As we discussed last week, the culprit is the parking pawl, which doesn’t properly engage in affected models due to resistance between the parking rod and wedge. That means the Park gear can’t be trusted to do its job, and so drivers must use the emergency brake as well. Nissan told Autoblog that it has paused sales of all auto-equipped examples of the 2023 Z while it investigates the issue:
“Nissan initiated a quality hold on MY2023 Nissan Z automatic-transmission-equipped vehicles on August 29, 2022 while it investigates this issue. The investigation is ongoing at this time,” Nissan spokesperson Jonathan Buhler told Autoblog, confirming that this constitutes “[...] a stop sale for any AT model whether it is on a showroom floor or in any other stage.”
Interestingly, there is no active recall for the Z at the time of writing, like there is for the brand’s trucks. Nissan has determined about 10 percent of pickups manufactured in the month of August were determined to have this issue, according to Autoblog’s story.
If you happen to already have your new Z, fortunately the temporary fix is simple: just yank that parking brake every time you park the car. And if you want to buy an automatic Z, you’ll have to wait. That may give you time to reconsider, as the manual really is the way to go with this coupe, if you can opt for it. The nine-speed auto isn’t a fancy dual-clutch system with rapid shifts or anything like that, and my colleague Bob found it to be a bit of a bore, particularly due to its programmed distaste for aggressive downshifts.