Rally anyone?

[Doehring]

Hi friends,

as far as I know the Le Mans car that Hans Schuller, the Safari Co-driver of Hermann and Safari winner, brought to Le Mans in 1975 was originally an Ex-Safari car. They became 23rd in the general classement and 1st in the class up to 2.5 litres.

Rolf

[HS30-H]

Hello Doehring,

We are probably getting nearer the truth now, and it seems that we are uncovering a little bit of creative resourcefulness on the behalf of the '75 Le Mans entrant ( commonly known as "cheating"! ). The car at Le Mans in '75 was wearing a Japanese registration plate with the numbers "6466" which was originally on a LHD 260Z Works Rally car that never competed in the Safari Rally. If the car was in fact an ex-Works Safari Rally 240Z, then the "6466" number must have been a switch.......

In my experience, if somebody is talking about cars that have some Works competition rally history then they almost invariably say that it is "ex Safari". If you added up all the cars that were "ex Safari" it would probably come to a couple of hundred!

I think that this happens because the Safari Rally was one of the Z car's most successful events. They won outright twice with the Z, and that tends to get remembered better than a third on the Monte Carlo or even a win on the Welsh Rally................

I think it seems to be becoming clear that the Japanese registration plate that the car was wearing at the '75 Le Mans should not have actually been on it. The car that entered Le Mans in '75 may well have been an ex-Works Safari Rally 240Z that Hans Schuller sourced from the Works rally team, but they obviously needed to have some kind of identity switch because of homologation and eligibility rules. I think this must be why they gave it the Japanese registration number ( and presumably some paperwork to back up the identity was shown to the ACO ).

If that '75 Le Mans car was indeed an ex-Safari Rally car ( it was certainly not one of the two that won the event, as they are both still extant and belong to Nissan in Japan ) then it would have led a very interesting and varied life! That would be another statistic for the record books; Safari Rally AND Le Mans history!

All the best,

HS30-H

[Doehring]

Hi ev'rybody,

let's go on to the essentials of datsuns works engagements to fill the white spots on the map one by one.

As far as my sources are correct Datsun engaged itself with Z cars OUTSIDE AFRICA 1st times with 4 Group 3 240Zs in Sept. 1970 in GB (RAC-Rallye). Drivers were Rauno AAltonen, Tony Fall, Edgar Herrmann and John Bloxham. A 5th Z was for services. All 4 cars had problems because of differential overheating. Only Aaltonen finished, having 3 best results on special stages in between.

In 1971 a Z finished in 5th position at Rallye Monte Carlo. Also in 1971 Tony Fall won the Welch-Rallye. In 1972 Aaltonen finished 3rd in Monte Carlo. Also in 1972 Shekar Mehta became 6th at the greece Akropolis Rallye and Tony fall finished 4th in Portugal. In 1973 Aaaltonen was long time in 2nd pos. at the Monte Carlo until a fuel line broke. Also in 1973 some works drivers startet as privateers. So Mehta damaged a Z in Maroc and Hans Schuller, Herrmanns Co-driver in Africa, started in Germany. The licence plate of this car was SU 6470. The portuguise importer prepared 2 Zs (drivers nn) and in NORTH AMERICA at the "Press on regardless -Rallye" the couple Smiska finished 2nd in '72 and 3rd in '73.

The 260Z was no big success . In '74 a 260Z finished 5th in Portugal. In '75 Schuller was engaged in Le Mans.

AFRICA:

In 1971 Datsun prepared 4 Zs for the East African Safari. The engines for Africa did not base on the Z 432 but on the L24 with about 210 HP, 200 km/h top speed with a long 4th gear (4,625:1). Totla weight was 1250 kg. Herrmann/Schuller startet with car #11, #12 was driven by Aaltonen/Easter,#31 by Mehta/Doughty and the 4th Z was run by Jack Simonian. Herrmann finished 1st in front of Mehta. Aaltonen became 7th. In '72 3 Zs started (Aaltonen/Fall, Mehta/Doughty and Herrmann/Schuller). Herrmann finished in 5th, Aaltonen in 6th and Mehta in 10th position.

In 1973 the 240Z became a 2,5 Litre, 240HP, 205 km/. 89 teams started, only 19 finished that 5000 km event. Mehta was the winner over all. In 1974 Datsun engaged 3 260Z in East Africa. They finished 5th and 6th with Kallstrom/Bilstram and Ramtulla /Jivani (3rd team n.n.) Only 16 of 99 teams finished that tough 5100 km event.

How many Zs were engaged as "mules" (training cars) or for services I don't know Perhaps anybody knows the id-#s of the works cars so that we can trace their lives.

Rolf

[EricB]

Hey Rodd, Alan, and Guus, (and anyone else?)

Just so you guys know there is some interest from the states as regards this thread - I can think of at least two of us for sure... then again I am a displaced French citizen and my friend is of Dutch decent - so maybe we are just another bunch of Euros too then, eh?

If we haven't contributed it is probably because we are probably not quite as versed on the matter as you all...

-e

[EricB]

Evidemment je souhaite aussi le bonjour a Fred de La Rochelle (tres jolie ville d'ailleurs). Und also einen "Halo" für Herr Doehring (ich wahr in München gebohren aber mein Deutsch ist ein bissien schlecht - enschuligung.)

-e

[Z-point]

Originally posted by EricB

Hey Rodd, Alan, and Guus, (and anyone else?)

Just so you guys know there is some interest from the states as regards this thread - I can think of at least two of us for sure... then again I am a displaced French citizen and my friend is of Dutch decent - so maybe we are just another bunch of Euros too then, eh?

If we haven't contributed it is probably because we are probably not quite as versed on the matter as you all...

-e

EricB,

I think you got it wrong. You are not the only two who are watching.

Have a look at this link http://www.240z.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=22

It shows this thread has 928 hits!!

Guus

Z-point

[sennavsprost]

I wish that I could contribute to this thread as well, but I think I'll just sit back and watch this one... by the way Im the Dutch jerk Eric was reffering to.

[HS30-H]

Thanks for the kind words from EricB & sennavsprost - its nice to know that its not just a few demented idiots like me who find this interesting.

Doehring, you have collected a fair bit of data about those Works rally cars. However, I keep hearing about more and more little events and testing that we never heard about. Sometimes the Works team would ship cars back to Japan after a few events and refurbish them, after which they would be brought back to Europe, Africa or Australia to act as practice cars / chase cars, or as entries for local drivers. As far as I am aware, Nissan have never released to the general public any information regarding the chassis numbers of the Works rally cars. The local team base organisers ( such as Old Woking Service Station in the UK, and D.T.Dobie in Kenya ) would obviously know which chassis numbers they had at any particular time, but I should think that only Nissan's Competition Department staff themselves would have all the data about which chassis did which event.

There is a lot of misleading information in the English-language books that cover the subject of Nissan's competition history. We cannot trust all that we read, as it usually has not come from the horse's mouth. I would have thought that there is an opportunity for the definitive book on the S30 type Z race history to be written, but any volunteer would have to do a hell of a lot of research!

By the way Doehring, did I make it seem as though I thought that some of the Works rally cars used the S20 engine in my previous post? Sorry about that if I did - but certainly the Works rally cars only ever used the L-series sixes ( with the later ones using the "LY" Crossflow version ). What I was talking about was the similarity of the Z432-R ( PS30-SB ) bodyshell to the shell construction of the Works rally cars. That is something that few people realise or comment on.

Here is an "on-line" present for Guus...........

[HS30-H]

Hey sennavsprost!

your avatar is going to start some new threads if you are not careful! Did you know that the no.15 car still exists? It's part of the Harada Collection at the Kawaguchiko Motor Museum in Japan, and they sometimes bring it out for demonstration runs. That S20 engine just screams.............

Here's another little scan on the thread of our Works rally car discussion. This pic. shows a Works car at Nissan's rally test course in Japan. They did a fair bit of simulation out there before they sent the cars out of Japan for the rallies..........

[HS30-H]

At the risk of starting a whole new thread, here is a picture of what I am REALLY interested in.

This is a picture of Works driver Kenji Tohira at the 1971 Japan Grand Prix in the GT race ( in the GT-2 class ) in a Works ( SCCN ) HS30 "Fairlady Z".

Just in case you heard that the Z was not very successful in domestic races.....................

[Caen Fred]

Oh please, Uncle Alan tell me one more story...

I was browsing yesterday night on the Jap web-ring and I realised that every country has it's own vision of the Z.

Interesting to see all those G-nosed cars and the fat wheeled Z, I could kill for those!!! That made me think (Ouch, not used to that!) is there any notorious Japanese Z goddess, like Big Sam on UK, or the BRE, Newman’s… ?

You’re right about the race book, maybe we could start with a new Historical page on this site, what do you think moderator man ?

Anybody up to the task ?

Fred

[Caen Fred]

Where is that, what is it ?????