The Nissan IDx Was An Affordable RWD Coupe Too Good For This World

It might be hard to believe looking at its current line-up, but Nissan was once the king of the affordable rear-drive coupe. Before the S15 Silvia went out of production in 2002, the model line had been going since 1965 - only for it to never be replaced. Sure, Nissan has still built the Z, but with the Toyota GT86/Subaru BRZ existing, it’s a wonder why no competitor has ever come.

Well, it almost did. Back in 2013 at the Tokyo Motor Show, the Nissan IDx was revealed - or rather, two of them were, the Freeflow and the Nismo.

Undoubtedly heavily influenced by the Nissan Bluebird (which you might know as the Datsun 510 Coupe), the concepts were supposed to “challenge the conventions of car design”. Sure, Nissan, but really we know you just wanted to build a cheap coupe.

The Freeflow was designed to be a funky commuter car rather than a bonafide sports car. As such its design was sharp but not super obnoxious. The same could be said for the interior, with its paint-matched cream inserts, beige leather and three-spoke steering wheel and uncluttered dash. Yes, it had an auto - or more exact, a CVT - with the idea of it being powered by a small petrol engine between 1.2- and 1.5-litres. Not exactly sporty.

Which is why the Nismo existed. This really upped the ante, adding angry-looking humpers, side-exit exhausts, a race car-style rain light at the rear and even a livery inspired by Datsun race cars of old. A slight markdown for the fake wheel arch rivets, but you can’t win them all.

It was a similar story inside. New red bucket seats were included, along with a macho-looking steering wheel with carbon fibre inserts, a sportier gauge cluster and Nismo branding plastered everywhere

Nissan never confirmed which gearbox and engine combination the concept was intended to have, but it said a 1.6-litre turbocharged four-pot was the most likely candidate. It would still have a CVT, but with a ‘six-speed manual shift mode’, however that worked.

Although Nissan’s press release never explicitly said it was going to build the IDx, we all wanted it - as did some within Nissan. In 2014, Nissan vice president Andy Palmer (yes, the former Aston Martin CEO) told Autocar that development of at least one version was underway, but never said which.

So we waited and waited and waited, but nothing ever happened. In 2019, a Nissan engineer took to Reddit to tell us the story. Apparently, the reported plans to build it were very much real, but there were several obstacles.

The first and presumably biggest was having nowhere to build it, with investment in the Tochigi plant - where the GT-R and 370Z were built at the time - deemed too expensive to be worth it.

Nissan was also said to be concerned about cannibalising 370Z sales, and for a car with very little profit margin.

So, the Nissan IDx was and will forever remain consigned to the history books. You could sort of drive it, had you bought a DLC pack for Forza Horizon 2, but that’s the closest we’ll ever come. We’ll carry a bit of sadness to our graves with that fact.