Get excited! Nissan confirms early work is underway on reborn Silvia and 200SX project as brand pines for affordable performance car beneath GT-R and Z

Early work is underway on a reborn Nissan Silvia project, with the brand confirming "upstream exercises" have been undertaken to determine what architecture would underpin an all-new affordable performance car.

That's the word from Ivan Espinosa, Nissan's Vice president, Product Strategy & Planning, who said he is lobbying for the Silvia to complete what would be a trilogy of performance cars for the brand.

But Mr Espinosa was also quick to temper expectations, he said the exploratory work is not confirmation the project will go ahead, with a final decision yet to be made.

Read More About Nissan

'There's a lot of Silvia fans everywhere': Nissan product boss considering Silvia or 200SX revival as a sub-GT-R sports car to potentially rival the Toyota GR86 and Mazda MX-5 - report Japan's sports car renaissance: New Mazda RX-7, Nissan GT-R and Toyota MR2 lead new wave of hero models Performance cars for everyone: 2024 Nissan Z Nismo arrives with plentiful supply to tackle Toyota Supra and Ford Mustang GT

"We have been doing some very early upstream exercises of what the archiecture could look like. This is true,” he said.

"I would love to see something before the end of the decade. I’m not sure we’re going to do it, just to be 100 percent clear, but it’s something that I would like to do, if we can."

If the project goes ahead – and it's worth noting that Nissan's design team has been working on exploratory Silvia designs, too – then Mr Espinosa is keen to ensure it wears the iconic nameplate last seen in the early 2000s, and which was known as the Nissan 200SX in Australia.

"I’m trying to make it happen," said Espinosa.

"It’s not easy, because the sports car market is shrinking, so you need to find something that will work globally in order to have enough scale.

"At the same time, being one of the first…potentially electrified sports cars, the assets need to be created from the ground up, and this requires a serious level of investment, this is what is proving a bit difficult at the moment.

"But I'm trying. In my brain, (there are) three sports cars in my lineup – a GT-R, a Z and something else. And this 'something else' in my brain is called the Silvia.

"Now, will we do it? I’m trying," he said.

If the Silvia project gets green lit, don't expect it to be jointly developed with another manufacturer. Instead, Mr Espinosa said the model would be completed in-house, and then potentially offered to OEM partners as a way to reduce its development cost.

"I personally don’t advocate (joint-development) with these kinds of cars," he said.

"Also because it's one of the things that Nissan can do very well. We might need help with other areas where others are probably stronger than us, but in this particular area, just like the Patrol, we are very good at it. We are very good at doing these kinds of cars.

"Probably I would go and offer it to somebody, rather than asking for help. Probably I can do this as a way of building scale would be to offer it to some of the parties we’re working with."