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First unveiled at the 1985 Frankfurt Autoshow, the MID4 was a concept car designed by Nissan to originally go on sale in the mid-late 1980s. Nissan had aimed the MID4 to compete with European supercars from Porsche and Ferrari. It featured a mid-engined all wheel drive layout as well as a wide array of technology and features that would eventually find their way into other Nissan production cars. The MID4 prototypes would evolve into the MID4 II.
The MID4 II was developed and shown in 1988 at the Tokyo Motor Show. It had more streamlined styling that looked production ready next to the previous concept. The new car was seen testing in the US, leading to speculation that it could be produced and exported. Styling was reminiscent of the 240SX in the rear with buttress style “C” pillars looking very Ferrari like. The refined looked could have easily slipped in at the top of the Nissan lineup or as a future Infiniti flagship. The revised look again was neither aggressive nor overtly conservative, but lacked the visual oomph of a Ferrari. Honda managed a similar trick with the NSX by making an exotic supercar seem as user-friendly as an everyday appliance. Call it Japanese modesty, but the MID4 II was more capable than it looked. Only 3 were produced, all with a five speed manual transmission and left hand drive.
Although most modest appliances can’t reach 250 km/h, the MID4 II was developed in the hope of making its many advance technologies appliance-like in their dependability and performance. The real news with the MID4 II was under the hood. Twin turbocharging had boosted the V6 to 300 hp. Nissan looked to have a real Porsche killer on its hands.
Despite having nearly every gadget on board, the MID4 II weighed just 1.224 kg. That was considerably less that the Porsche 959, a car it was compared to often. The MID4 also would have cost less than the Porsche, but Nissan still considered it too costly to produce. Even as plans were made to retire the MID4 II from the show car circuit, Nissan was said to be considering it’s next supercar, using an Infiniti sourced V8.
The MID4 project delivered a host of goodies to other Nissans. The four-wheel steering went to the Skyline, Bluebird and Cefiro while some of its looks rubbed off on the redesigned 1986 300ZX. More importantly, the performance potential of the all-wheel drive system was demonstrated in the R32 Skyline, making it Nissan’s effective supercar overnight. The MID4 proved that Nissan could mix it up with the best of them and that its future products would benefit from technology that would be as reliable as it was effective.
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