HS30-H

Meh. Groundhog Day (again). We've been over this several times before on the forum here. Carl Beck's commissioned 'translation' of the Nostalgic Hero article leaves a lot to be desired and has the usual "made for the USA" type skew which puts the cart so far out in front of the horse that it might as well book a motel room for the night while the poor horse catches up. At the risk of invoking Deja Vu (all over again....) I'll ask - yes, again.... ...and this was? What 4 cylinder block did Hiroshi Iida "add two cylinders" to? What does "he used" mean here? Personally I'd give Hiroshi Iida the benefit of the doubt and argue that he was 'inspired by' the MB valvetrain layout and packaging. His design was not exactly the same. I don't believe any patents were licensed, let alone infringed. MB must have been satisfied there was enough difference, or just not bothered. The M180 was an MB engine. The G7 was a Prince engine. The L20 and subsequent 'L-gata module' engines were Nissan engines.

I will put aside a spare copy for you here. I made a small contribution to the content, so I've got some to give away to friends and family.

Morita san has long been working on a new MOTOR Magazine 'mook', finally released on 24th October, and weighing in at just under 1kg. You'll see lots of never-seen-before photos and the usual high production and editorial values of MOTOR Magazine. Text is mostly Japanese, but the photos are in English. Heartily recommended!

Ten years ago, some of my photo posts on this thread were scans taken from original Japanese magazines of the period. Quality could have been better. And now it can be. Morita san of MOTOR Magazine has kindly posted scans of some the original photos from their archives:

It was a half-scale concept model.

The Nissan stand area at the '69 Tokyo show was quite extensive. Here are some images of other Nissan product on display:

Thread bump for the 24th October 2019 50th Anniversary. A couple more images from the 1969 Tokyo show stand:

Personally speaking, I have gradually learned to be more pragmatic. Plenty of replica stuff on my cars. Perfect is the enemy of good.

A good sheetmetal worker could probably make a fairly convincing replica for you. I have a couple of spare originals, but once the selling price and shipping are factored in you might be better off commissioning the replica instead.

Would you say that the styling/design/engineering accommodated other markets/contemporary variants, or not? Rhetorical question: How about other models, or was the S30-series Z somehow unique? NB: I'm not saying that the S30-series Z was conceived, styled, designed and engineered mainly as a Japanese market model (who would say that?) but that the cars themselves - and the components they are built up from - tell us that the "Made For The USA" story is more of an advertising slogan than anything else. If you've seen all the contemporary variants in the metal and examined them closely, I don't see that you can think other than that these cars were very cleverly designed and engineered to accommodate several different contemporary variants and markets. Just like pretty much all of Nissan's product of the same period, in fact.

You didn't have to wait very long, did you? ?

So what does "it was for the USA" actually mean? Looking at the cars themselves - quite apart from any anecdotal evidence - it is clear that this was a series of multiple variants intended to be sold into several different markets. Take another peep up-thread at the photo of the factory aircon system which Kats posted. Was that "for the USA"? Targeting the largest single market for bulk sales was not exactly rocket science, was it? VW, MG, Triumph, Jaguar, Austin-Healey, Fiat, MB, Porsche and even Ferrari did the same. How many times do we hear the "made for the USA" strap line attached to their products? Almost never, of course. Largely because "we made this for YOU" wasn't part of their sales patter. The numbers are - by definition - after the fact. I don't see that they 'prove' anything much about concept, styling and engineering? They may (may...) illustrate economic achievement (there's a possibility that the dealers in the USA made as much - if not more - out of each car sold than Nissan themselves did) but would be subject to all sorts of Force Majeure and it is clear in retrospect that the 1965-ish through 1978-ish period was blessed as something of a golden age when a lot of holes in the cheese lined up. Katayama's bucket anecdote sums it up neatly but, in contrast, by the 1980s you had changing economics, anti-Japanese sentiment growing and the UAW saying "If you sell in America, build in America". If sales figures proved "made for" then why don't people say "made for" about all those Jaguars and Porsches, let alone the hundreds of thousands of little Datsun pickup trucks the USA consumed? I'm not even going to touch the Canada angle. I'm always reading about the success of this "made for the USA" idea with regard to the '240Z' (yes, it usually paints '240Z' as "the first" or "the original", ignoring the other contemporary variants in the series and oblivious to the idea that '240Z' might mean more than one thing...) so when and how was this applied to other models? 'Dumbed down, softened up, piled high and sold cheap'. How's about that for a slogan?

Would you happen to know what part of the USA it was originally sold in? Could it have been considered 'wet/snowy' for a significant part of the year?

Except that we are constantly told that these cars were "...made for the USA", "...designed for the USA", "...would not exist if it were not for the USA" etc etc. The truth is that several different variants and pretty much a world market were accommodated in the concept, design, styling, engineering and production of the S30-series Z range. All I can say is, don't hold your breath...! So many people were involved in the process, and so many decisions were taken, that we probably should not expect every question to have one, clear, answer. For me, the questions are part of the fun.

With respect, I think the answer - for your 1971 production HLS30U model - was clearly given by Kats further up the thread. The highest probability is that your car did NOT come with one as-delivered from the factory, but could accommodate the fitting of one if that's what you want to do.

If you look further at your car you will see other details that were added because the parts/assemblies were common with those used on other variants and other market models. For example, your radiator support panel has holes and captive nuts to accommodate the fitting of an oil cooler, radiator overflow reservoir tank and air filter box/ducting. Your front differential crossmember has double cutouts and double captive nuts to allow the mounting of a twin pipe exhaust system. There are many details like these on our cars. The holes for the splash pan mounting screws were added to the relevant structural parts of the monocoque when they were made and those components were shared across other variants/markets, so their presence does not necessarily indicate that the car was originally fitted with a splash pan. More that the structure was designed and manufactured with the ability to accommodate one. I think that's a pretty good guess. It seems that some climates considered wet/snowy got the splash pans, whilst others possibly considered predominately 'dry' (except when I go there on holiday...) did not. A little like the initial heated rear window situation for the HLS30U, perhaps? There's also the possibility of a cost factor - however minor - being involved. Some of the decisions made about the HLS30U variants seem to be about cutting costs wherever possible in order to mitigate the chosen selling price. In my experience the splash pans - it does what it says on the box - are very effective. Perhaps a little too vulnerable, and they get in the way when you want to work under the car, but they work.

Certainly all UK market, and - as far as I am aware - all 'Euro' market cars - DID have the splash pan.

It's a quality control stamp which reads 合格 ('Go Kaku') meaning 'Pass(ed)'.

So are you stating categorically that nobody said it, or are you stating that the L20 six was not the six cylinder engine first slated for the 'Maru Z'/'270KK' project? As I asked before (rhetorically...), how could anyone - let alone Katayama - have specifically requested the L20A or L24 when they didn't even exist at that point? And why are you apparently so scared to consider that the 'old' L20 six was part of the design and engineering process? What's the problem with that? Which "existing 4 cylinder block" was that? Twin carb versions of the C130-series Cedric were never dropped and the 'old' L20 six - with progressive updates and improvements in materials - was produced and sold well into 1970. This is one of the casualties of a poor non-technical translation of the Hiroshi Iida interview in Nos Hero and a lack of understanding of the Japanese market models. Of course, what you're doing is setting out your stall to paint the L20 six as 'bad' and the L16/L24 as 'good'. Because... Ah, here it is. L16 being portrayed as genesis with no mention of the L13. Because... Katayama Lore ahoy! When did Katayama know the L24 was "coming", Carl? Got a date for that? And we have the old "L16 for America" nonsense in there too. The L16 - designed along with the L13 - was part of the L-gata modular series that was used in the Japanese market, later to include the L14, L15 and L18. The L16 was not "for America", it was for Nissan, and the Japanese market got it too. Katayama was not "responsible for getting the L16 designed", he was simply lobbying for more power, more flexibility and better driveability, which was what the Japanese market also wanted. He was not creating particular bore and stroke combinations. You're painting the L20 six as some kind of failure. What does "short lived" mean? It was in production for a good five years and used for export markets as well as domestic. Being the very first Nissan 'L-gata' OHC design it was due for updating by 1969, which was a natural process and made sense for ongoing commonalisation of componentry, installations and servicing. You're drawing an arbitrary line in the middle of a normal progression. Like they did with - for example - the C10-series Skyline? It debuted in short-nose form (G15 4cyl engine) in July 1967, with the L20 six - yes, the 'bad' one, following in September 1968 with the debut of the GC10 models. At one point Nissan was selling C10-series Skylines with both the 'old' L20 six and the updated L20A in the C10-series Skyline lineup, with the 'A' suffix added to avoid confusion between the two types. So, far from Nissan not "planning on using an engine that was going out of production", they did just that very thing on the C10-series Skyline. C10-series Skyline production during its 1967 through 1972 life was knocking on the door of half a million units. The first six cylinder engine slated for the 'Maru Z'/'270KK' project - which would become the S30-series Z - can only have been the 'old' L20 six, because that's all that existed at the time. It was soon joined by the S20 and, by the time the project matured, the L20 had progressed - naturally - to its updated L20A type form. Unless we look at what else Nissan was designing and producing during the same period we will never fully understand the S30-series Z.

His name was Hiroshi Iida: 飯田浩 (Iida Hiroshi). That's usually romanised with a double letter 'i', although a macron over a single letter 'i' might be more accurate linguistically: Īda Hiroshi.

It's garbage, but India is not to blame for it.

Evidently so in the case you show, but I'm surprised that people don't seem to be ready to accept the possibility of a little chaos theory sprinkled through all this. How about the possibility that Mr Suzuki's pot of yellow paint was running a little low, and that a little bit of thinner was added to save him opening another one? Or that Mr Yamaguchi preferred a thinned consistency whilst traditionalist Mr Mori liked a well-stirred thick daub, and young Mr Ito - who had a late night last night - didn't stir his pot as well as she should have? And all that on just one shift... I think we should be cautious of creating set-in-stone definitions for what are human-added elements subject to natural variation.

In that case what "prototype" with a 4cyl engine was sent to the USA, and ended up with a 6cyl engine for production on Katayama's say-so? Nissan's most successful models in the north American market all used 4cyl engines. As I've pointed out, those "couldn't keep up with Freeway traffic", "dangerously slow" and "more power needed" stories come from the first Datsun models sent to the USA in late 1950s. Yes, they were underpowered and Japanese consumers - just as much as anyone else - needed a better product. The likes of Nissan, Toyota, Prince, Honda, Isuzu, Mazda and others were busy making that a reality less than 15 years after the total devastation of war.

Are you citing this as evidence of fact? I'd say it makes it even clearer that we are talking about the work of many hands, most of them not even getting a name-check. Hitoshi Uemura, for example. Personal anecdote: I stood in front of Yutaka Katayama in Japan and listened while he said "I designed it". But he was already well into his nineties and I didn't take it literally. He was standing next to Yoshihiko Matsuo, who didn't bat an eyelid. If we are going to research and curate the history of these cars we have to weight up all evidence and come to a studied and balanced view. Relying on one source - as though it is the font of all truth and wisdom - is just not enough.