HS30-H

Feel free to draw your own "aerodynamics art" on the original sales promotion image of the Bingo Sports 432:

Are you taking it seriously....?

It's for later cars than yours. August '73 up, I believe. Isn't the hose spacing different, and no hole for the centre fastening on earlier cars?

I'd urge great caution on the Fairlady Z-specific data posted on zhome.com, as it contains a significant number of errors, rogue data and plain miscomprehensions. For example, the "Fairlady Z Owners Register" appears to contain data submitted by owners which is clearly incorrect, but remains uncorrected. So you get - for example - a 'GS30' prefixed 2/2 model clearly built in 1974 (directly identifiable from its body serial number) being called a "1971 model year" car, an 'S30' prefixed model clearly built in the latter half of 1975 (directly identifiable from its body serial number) being called a "1978 model year" car and a 'GS31' prefixed 2/2 model clearly built in 1977 (...body serial number again) being called a "1976 model year" car. It's a mess. The truth is that we have far more accurate and comprehensive - peer-group curated and edited - hard data and ephemera regarding the Japanese market models right here on the classiczcars forum.

No, each prefix ('S30'/'PS30'/'HS30'/'HLS30'/'RS30'/'RLS30' etc etc) had it's own serial number sequence, so - theoretically - you could line up 'S30-00023', 'PS30-00023', 'HS30-00023' and 'HLS30-00023' and the "#23" of each other prefix type alongside each other at a virtual car show. The body serial number sequences ran at different production rates for each prefix and with gaps where deemed useful or necessary, so it's best not to think of them as linear and/or directly comparable with each other.

'S30-100698' would indeed be 1973 production year. Towards the latter half of 1973, too. Plenty of parts on the car will have date codes that you can cross-reference to give you a pretty good idea of the build month, if that's what you are after. We have covered the topic many times in the past on the forum, so there's an abundance of interesting data mining to be done. If you struggle, just ask. Good luck!

There's really no input from the Japanese side of the story, so it is naturally skewed to the point of view of the people who have been interviewed. The people who built the cars and who took them half way around the world to compete with them are - in my opinion - probably the most reliable witnesses, certainly so in the specs and details of the cars themselves. You can witness drivers and navigators who actually used the cars in period apparently knowing relatively little about them. Comments like "they were relatively stock/standard", when they were far, far from that - especially so in the case of the early lightweight bodied versions. In extreme cases it's akin to a sort of cargo cult scenario where a television falls into the hands of a culture that's never seen one before. When the Works rally cars turned up the UK for the 1970 RAC Rally, almost nobody had seen a 240Z before. They didn't know what was standard equipment and what wasn't. It's little wonder that the journalists of the time had a hard time understanding the full details of the cars thus setting in stone their mistakes to be followed ever since...

Don't take it all as gospel fact though. It's a nice article but it's chock full of the usual mistakes, misapprehensions, assumptions and received wisdoms. Better to use it as a base for further research and a lot of cross-referencing.

Probably because words fail me. Either that or because I'm on a weather-related go slow after a couple of days of 'Beast From The East' blizzard conditions here in Ye Olde Englande. From the sales blurb: "This evocative 240Z is a super replication of the Nissan works car that was driven by Rauno Altonen and navigated by Jean Todt in the 1972 Monte Carlo rally finishing in a very creditable third place." "Super replication"? It's actually nothing like it. Nothing. Not unless you count red and black paint, a kids art project idea of a carnet number plate and some '5' stickers as 'close enough'... They credited Goertz in the blurb too. That's a top-scoring double fail in Z History Bingo. House! Cars like this are built to purpose, and that purpose is modern historic 'regularity' type events rather than stage rallies. Compliance with modern safety regulations and a bias to practicality is enough to make such cars stray a long way from true period Works specifications. I'm sure it's a good car, but claiming "super replication" of a real period Works car is well wide of the mark.

Two points: I have supplied data to you in the past - which you have used - but you never acknowledged, and never credited. Over the years I have spent a lot of time, money and effort to seek out documentation, original photographs and data. I try to use it wisely, sparingly and when appropriately, and also try to understand it fully before utilising it. That includes how and when I 'share' any of it. Why would I simply give it all away for somebody to put on their 'blog' in the context that *they* choose, and without having any input? I get many, many requests for data and reference material and I do try to help with the majority of them, but I can't - sometimes won't - be able to help them all.

But, for you, the "big picture" doesn't seem to include Japan, let alone the 'Global Market' that Nissan had ambitions to take a share of with ALL of their products. Yes, great pains were taken to make the HLS30U 'Datsun 240Z' suitable for the North American market, and to price it at a level where maximum sales would cover reduced profit margins. But how does this translate to "Z was for US Market", the title of this thread? Unquestionably, the S30-series Z was conceived, styled, designed, engineered and produced for multiple markets. What's the argument to the contrary, let alone the evidence?

Two points: "...earliest 240Z sketches..." is cart before horse. Nissan weren't designing the "240Z". They were working on a project which would be named 'Maru Z', '270KK' (#270 Kaihatsu Kigou) and - finally - 'S30-series'. The Export models were not named '240Z' until the eleventh hour, and long after the Domestic models had been given their chosen names. Goertz got a namecheck in the Mizma Gikou blog you are quoting from, which connected him with the CSP311 Silvia. As has been pointed out, Goertz had minimal input on the CSP311 and yet you still - a little further up - credit him yourself as a major contributor (and - as has also been pointed out - the *real* designers/stylists/engineers are not mentioned). The blog also calls the CSP311 - in typical hyperbolic fashion - a failure. Anybody who writes it off as such has clearly missed the point. Pointing at 'low sales' as failure, when high sales were not actually envisioned - let alone possible due to the production methods - is another example of quite complex stories being presented in simplistic form.

But you're perfectly happy with the "I know more about USA car culture than you do..." type statement that spawned it?

Ha ha ha! There it is. I think I'll frame it. "It failed". Utter, utter nonsense. You're on another planet.

Dennis, I'll ask your advice then. How would you answer somebody who says "You guys just don't have the perspective that comes from growing up in the car culture over here."...like there's something I'm missing? It's like he's telling me that I don't know what beef tastes like or something. I mean really, WTF? It's laughable.

Like it was news that the USA market had a huge potential for sales in the 60s and 70s? Every manufacturer worth its salt was aiming at the USA in some way during the post-war period. 'Export or Die' was the rallying call over here in the United Kingdom. It's telling that you cite Katayama as being in some way on-point, like he was Christopher Columbus or something. Late to the show, I'd say. Austin even put together a car especially aimed at the potential of the USA market, and called it the Atlantic. You could say "Made For The USA" about it. Didn't sell. The fact that it had been conceived and designed with the USA in mind simply wasn't enough. Quite frankly, it wasn't very good at being anything in particular. Key point. Nissan made a good car in the S30-series Z. Good stylistically, good dynamically. International exchange rates of the time as well as favourable shipping routes and open markets allowed it to fulfill its potential and sell well in North America, but at what point does aiming something at a particular market become making it for that market? All the other major manufacturers of sports cars were targeting the lucrative USA market too. Were their cars "made for" the USA, as in conceived, designed and engineered specifically for the USA, and nowhere else? How about all those other Nissans that paved the way - and even outsold - the Z? The tens of thousands of little pickup trucks, the Sunnies, the Bluebirds? Do the sales numbers mean that they too were "designed for the USA"? I don't think so. As I've said before, you only have to look at the details of the cars themselves to see the design concessions, the pragmatism and good engineering that went into them. It tells us that targeting a particular market for volume sales does not make a car like the S30-series Z solely about that market. The title given to this thread was "Interesting Historical Information Indicating Z was for US Market", so where is that information? What does the title even mean...?

But what relevance has "the car culture over here" got to the story of a Japanese car, conceived, planned, styled, engineered and built in Japan by Japanese people? Are you saying that 'American car culture' somehow trumps or overshadows all of that? How? Let me turn that back on you and ask you if you have experienced Japan and Japanese car culture? How about working in the Japanese company culture, in Japan? Ever been involved in Japanese manufacturing? I have. 30+ years worth of experience one way and another. I think it would be rather gauche of me to say "you don't understand", but you're happy to say it to me regarding the USA, even when we are talking about a Japanese product. Remind me, where is it you live again? Oh and Coronation Street and Manchester? You have my condolences...

What does this even mean? I grew up with American car culture in the family, along with ALL car culture. Nobody needs to grow up in the USA to be able to get a handle on it. It's the same market that all the other manufacturers were aiming at in the post-war period and beyond. Volume sales. To make money. Traditionally it has meant tweaking your product to suit. In Nissan's case with the S30-series Z, it meant a certain amount of de-contenting, softening it up and arguably dumbing it down - not to mention de-tuning it to suit local requirements. Part of the selling process was "we made it just for you!". It worked, didn't it? But how does this translate to 'Made ONLY for the USA'? The fact that Nissan made such an effort to engineer the S30-series Z for both domestic and export markets, and for RHD as well as LHD, should tell us all we need to know. The evidence is on every car. How come you never, ever seem to consider the size of Nissan's single most important market (Japan), Nissan's ambitions for itself against its domestic rivals, or indeed the hopes, dreams and ambitions of the Japanese car-buying public during the period concerned? Does none of that count as far as you are concerned? Do you think they were in the business of making stuff only for the USA? Sorry but all that stuff about the trucks - whilst it is interesting in and of itself - is pretty much irrelevant here.

So Goertz gets a name check, but nobody else who worked on the project - which was pretty much complete before Goertz even turned up - does? Historillogical.

I think it's the wide expanse of the Pacific Ocean - separating Japan and North America - that counts here.

Well said! The whole idea of downloading excerpts from the Mizma Gikoh one-man blog and presenting them here as 'History' is, in my view, seriously misguided. He has an agenda. Nothing wrong with that if the evidence stacks up to support it, but it simply doesn't. He's a Honda fan to boot. The irony is that some of the cars mentioned in the beginning of a very long list actually WERE targeting the North American/USA market (stand up SPL212 and SPL213) and yet they are judged to be some kind of failure. Presumably this is because they were pretty much entirely based on the S211, which was not exported? And no mention at all of the A80X which preceded all of them? It's hard to take seriously anything which states that "Datsun produced" anything. 'Datsun' was not in the business of designing, making or producing anything, because it was simply an emblem affixed to a Nissan product. In 2014 Hitoshi UEMURA - the Chief Engineer on the S30-series Z project - published his book 'Fairlady Z Development Record', in which he spends a lot of time mentioning that the ergonomics of the project included percentiles of Japanese females as well as American males, that the needs and requirements of other export markets than the USA were taken into account, and that requirements for the Japanese home market were just as important as any single export market. If you look at the cars themselves you can see the amount of care and attention that was given to both RHD and LHD layouts, and yet we still have to hear and read this "Made For The USA" stuff all the time. Look at the engine and drivetrain; They were not made primarily with LHD markets in mind. "Made/Designed For The USA" ought to be "Volume Sales Targeted For USA/North America". Same as most sports cars of the 1950s, 60s and 70s...

I don't really want to break a butterfly on a wheel here, but... *polite cough*

You realise that AMPCO/Atsugi were part of the Nissan group of companies, now under the very wide wing span of Hitachi, right? Maybe not. I'm interested (not to say flabbergasted...) to see that you are sticking with the idea of 'TORCO' as a supplier to Nissan. How about 'NISSAN MO'? Maybe 'GENUINEPA' or 'ARTSNISS'? The possibilities are almost endless...

Reality check:

I'm sorry but I find it hard to take the JDM Junkies thing seriously. He's got half a paper parts label, he's reading 'TORCO LTD' on it and concluding that 'TORCO LTD' were the manufacturers of suspension components for Nissan...? There may well be a parallel universe where somebody has found the other half of that paper label, is reading 'NISSAN MO' on it and concluding that 'NISSAN MO' were the manufacturers of suspension components for Nissan.