HS30-H

Yes Kats, I can see you have too much free time between flights. I can sympathise. I went to a Jesuit school, and we were forced to wear boxing gloves in bed.

Isn't this just another - same old, same old - example of a journalist not really knowing what he's writing about? It's all very well him getting direct access to Matsuo san (and hats off to Eiji for his rudely uncredited live translation services) but he needs to have a grounded knowledge of the subject to fill in the gaps afterwards. Clearly he doesn't, and has referred to the usual myths and half truths instead... So we get told that Matsuo san worked at Nissan Shatai (Hiratsuka), when in fact he was based at the Nissan Design & Modelling Department (Tsurumi). We get Matsuo "exiled" to a new job and Katayama "exiled to the USA" as a "punishment" (nonsense), we get the 'hood raised to fit the L24' story (when it was raised to suit the L20, which came before the L24), we get told that Katayama chose "...to call the car in America by its working model number “240Z”..." when it's in-house project designation was actually '270' (from '270 Kaihatsu Kigou') and the old saw "...When the first shipment of 240Zs arrived in the United States still with “Fairlady” badges on the back, Katayama went so far as to personally remove them with his own hands.". First shipment, huh? And Nissan did have a full-size wind tunnel at their disposal. It's no surprise that '240Z' is used where 'S30-series' would be more appropriate, as that's become the norm and it's a habit that even accredited marque experts insist on. However it turns any discussion on the origin and development of the cars into a mess, throwing up situations where we get told "The Japanese 240Z even came with a stopwatch...". I'm tempted to shout "Fake News!", but it's more akin to to the blind leading the blind. Poor effort.

I wouldn't place too much store on the 'HP' element in the quote. Uemura san's original book (as opposed to the 'translation' version) uses the term '馬力' ('Bariki') which is an equivalent term for 'Horsepower', whilst the Japanese testing standard was actually 'PS' (the German standard of Pferdestarke) and the numbers are all very much rounded up. The normally-quoted figures for the different iterations of GR8 race engines on the other hand were usually somewhat rounded down, in order to keep the competition guessing. Quite a lot in Uemura san's original (Japanese) book seems to have been edited out of the English language 'translation', or 'tuned' to suit the 'Datsun 240Z' retitling. In any case, I would not take quoted engine power figures in either version at face value and without bearing in mind the wider stories behind them.

"G8B" was the factory designation for what then became the 'S20'. It wasn't the same engine as the GR8, despite the bloodline. The 'G8B' was somewhat simplified and mass-productionised in comparison to the pure race 'GR8', and the cylinder head casting in particular (along with the cam cover, inlet manifold, distributor/ignition system, cooling system/water pump and cam drive system) was completely different. I have factory race department dyno testing sheets from 1970 where they are still identifying the 'S20' as the 'G8B', probably through force of habit.

Kats, For reference, the 432-type S20 engine in my 432-R replica is stamped engine # S20-000877, and block casting numbers are 9 2 11 32: There was some suggestion that a batch of 432-type S20 engine blocks were cast at the same time as a batch of mid/late production PGC10 GT-R engine blocks, early in 1969.

Kats, Of course I think you know this, but... The answer is a simple 'no'. The 432-Rs that were sold to the general public - even if they were aspiring racers - and especially those that were registered for road use, had a fixed price and a fixed mechanical specification. They were pretty much on the limit of what was legally compliant for sale and road use in Japan at the time, and there was already some compromise on - for example - emissions issues with the deletion of the airbox, airfilter and the positive crankcase ventilation system that hooked up to it. If anybody wanted to tune their 432-R - or indeed go racing with it - then there was a whole raft of Nissan Sports/Race Option parts available for them to purchase and fit, and the official Nissan Sports Race & Rally 'Yellow Book' to advise them on parts, techniques and race settings: Out there in the ether there are misconceptions and claims that the 432-R - as sold to the general public - had a race-tuned engine, but I think this is simply mistaken. There's probably some element of confusion between the specs of the standard road-going 432-Rs and the Works race cars, which were of course completely different.

I don't believe the British press got anything exclusive with regard to Goertz. I think the "source of the Myth" was clearly Goertz himself, but he had friends and supporters in the North American automotive press and used them to big-up his 'portfolio'. Wasn't one of the biggest claims in the Canadian press? Anecdote: I was once threatened with legal action by some friends and associates of "Graf" Albrecht Goertz. They took exception to my correspondence with the British automotive press regarding their friend's work. They believe he "designed the Datsun 240Z", and were prepared to go to court to defend their view. I have no idea what evidence they could produce to support such a claim...

'According to Goertz' is not quite the same as 'according to Nissan', or according to reality... Goertz certainly had a little of Walter Mitty about him, and was making grand claims about his work in Japan when very few people were able to call him out on it because they mostly didn't get to hear about it. The terms of his contract with Nissan would make interesting reading (and a 19 month contract term is one I've yet to see...) but I think we can be sure he wasn't employed in a position as a "Design Consultant" in the sense that he was supposed to be actually designing anything. Reality: Goertz did not speak, read or write Japanese. All of his communication in Japan would have had to have been conducted through interpreters, or in English. That would have cramped his style somewhat. Nissan (and Prince) were big enough to hire the services of specialist coachbuilders like Pininfarina and Michelotti, and at least got the kudos of collaborations with such world-renowned coachbuilding houses and could use their names and badges. Goertz was an itinerant lone gun for hire who put himself in the frame rather than being sought out by Nissan, and they hired him for the very specific purpose of full size clay modelling techniques. I feel your pain RIP260Z. I just don't understand why Goertz gets namechecked so often with regard to 'our' cars. It makes a no-smoke-without-fire situation where even mentioning him as having nothing to do with the S30-series Z's creation makes a subliminal connection. I don't know what the solution is, except to be constant and repetitive in stating that he didn't "design" anything that went into production.

You think "predictable" is an exclusively negative trait then? You never seem to have anything to bring to a debate. You drop big statements (how about "...just the best and far superior to anything else in the world concerning production sports cars at that time." ?) but you don't seem to have anything to back them up when questioned. I've asked you what seems like a hundred times (yeah, predictable...) as to exactly what car/cars you were referring to with that particular statement, but you don't seem to be able to answer. All you come back with - usually after a period of radio silence - is another dodge. Where's the substance? For the record, I don't consider myself any sort of "guru". That's in your head not mine, and you'll need to take at least some responsibility for it. Truth be told I'd prefer to be a scholar, as there's still so much to learn. If I think you're wrong, I'll tell you. If I'm wrong I hope to be corrected (yeah, "BAM!"). The truth tends to come out one way or another. Debate! This is a forum, after all. On topic: Hopefully people will quickly see through crass insults regarding Takuma Sato's ability. He's not my "hero", but I'm glad a Japanese driver has got his name on the list of winners in another world classic race and he has shown speed elsewhere. By the same token I don't believe this Indy 500 win instantly makes Sato "the best Japanese driver of all time" (as is being claimed elsewhere by people who very likely couldn't name more than three Japanese drivers, and one of them Hiro Matsushita...) as that too is garbage.

This is the point at which a Facebook group would *call Carl Beck*, and roll out the digital red carpet... ;-)

Grande Nose is late 1971, so the 'G Nose' predates that crossmember/those mounts by quite a long way. I can state quite confidently that it's nothing specific to the ZG. The point about the horns is that these mounts simply move the horns forward of their normal positions. The horns then attach to the captive nuts in the forward end of the mounts, giving space for something quite big (like an aircon evaporator...) to mount in between them and the radiator. They are less horn mounts and more horn re-locators. Re-locating the horns is not their primary function. Oil cooler mounts is a red herring. The mount points for the (two types of) factory oil cooler are already in the (normal) body. Works rally cars never used anything like these mounts for sumpguards or spot/fog lamps. In any case, such mounts were 'free' in FIA Appendix J and didn't need to be homologated/attached to road cars to make them legal for rally use. If they are not the nascent air con evaporator mounts I am advised they are by people I trust to know, then I'll eat my hat and finish it off with my socks for dessert.

Well, I rounded up some opinions from *people who I thought should know* (no names, no pack drill...) last time I was in Japan. My use of "apparently" is a don't blame me if it's wrong get-out clause in case someone comes up with a plausible alternative story... ;-) Frame alignment is an interesting theory, but I don't buy it. If they are for frame alignment, what screws into the captive nuts? Some kind of measuring fixture? Where are the other reference points on the body then? Where's the factory literature to back it up (because shirley it would be for replacement panels in the field, and therefore the civilians need to know?)? Also, the lower radiator support crossmember is well forward of the alignment-critical areas of the unibody, and doesn't have anything of much importance hanging off it. Why have alignment-related hard points there, and for such a limited time? Doesn't seem to ring true to me. My main line of enquiry with them was aimed at nixing the idea that they were anything competition related. I don't think they are. In fact, let me be more definitive and say that I am SURE they are not competition-use related. It's surprisingly hard to prove a negative though. See? I knew we shouldn't have closed the case file on this one just yet...

Hi Kats, I think that bolt has had the oil pump duplex chain rubbing against it, possibly because the oil pump sprocket was not shimmed correctly on assembly. There are four grades of shim for the S20's oil pump drive sprocket and it is crucial to set it correctly. I don't think it is any kind of externally-caused accident damage. Much more likely to be an in-service failure and/or incorrect assembly. Not good!

When I mentioned the factory 'Roll Over/Safety Bar' mount prep points to ('Kaku U' team member) Osawa san in a conversation about competition influence, he had no idea they were even there. When I asked chief chassis engineer (also 'Kaku U' team member) Hitoshi Uemura about them he said "not my department...". It serves to remind that there was a cast of hundreds behind these cars.

I wouldn't close the file just yet. I still think there's more to be learned and understood about them and the story behind them. It's a mod/supersession that seems to have gone off half-cocked as far as I can see. I suppose we could surmise that the coming re-design of the rad support and lower crossmember (for the bigger radiator area) made the additional brackets obsolete, but I'm still curious.

Apparently they were part of a short-lived factory air con prep, relocating the horns to make more space for the condenser. 74820-E4201 was a factory replacement 'one size fits all' front crossmember/lower radiator support panel which incorporated them. It was superseded in 7/72. They are a little odd because they seem to be more often seen on cars that have had replacement crossmembers/lower rad supports fitted than on cars that left the factory with them...

You and our pal Grannyknot over here have something in common. Both fond of dropping lines which are easily shown to be a load of old cobblers. Apparently Sato 'couldn't drive' before he washed up in the IndyCar series, despite having been British F3 Champion, Macau GP winner and World F3 Masters winner before he even got to F1. Call yourself race fans? Even Lance Stroll 'can drive'. The vast, vast majority of drivers who pitch up in F1 and Indycar (even if it is riding on Daddy's money) can drive a car well enough to make the likes of you and me look like complete and utter tuggers.

Certainly don't want you to go to the trouble of coming up with any race results or statistics to back up your claims. Heaven forfend... But I'm still not clear as to which cars you are referring to? In reference to the lines I bolded above, you seem to be saying that S30-series Zs were raced in *stock specification* against modified Porsches? Where and when, please? I think it's nonsense. Porsche simply out-homologated the likes of Nissan during the period that the S30-series Z was current. They created cars like the aforementioned models (911S, 911T/R, 911R, 911S/T, 911RS 2.7 Carrera, 911 RSR 2.8, 911 RS 3.0, 911 RSR 3.0 Carrera) which could be purchased from a showroom and either driven on the road and/or on the race track, with factory support in readily available data and homologated, race legal competition parts. Nissan were not even trying to compete with that. It simply was not on their radar. They took inspiration from the 911R for the 432R (two cars of which you'll find no more enthusiastic fan than me) but the 432R was an exercise in domestic race homologation for JAF sanctioned events and it was never intended for export. Nissan didn't bother with FIA homologation for the 432 or 432R, their most sporting showroom-stock models of S30-series Z. I have been "following and examining the performance of various cars" from the late 1960s until now. In a previous post I mentioned that I was present at Le Mans as an 8-year old kid in June 1970 when Porsche took their first outright win at the event with the 917. I watched a Porsche 914/6 win the 2 litre GT class and a Porsche 911S win the 2.5 litre GT class in the same race. It made a big impression on me. I think I'm pretty well informed about the S30-series Z's race history (yes, including quite a lot of those pesky statistics) so I'm all ears if you can tell me something new. What have you got?

You are Lance Troll, perhaps? There's none so blind as those who will not see. Takuma Sato and Jenson Button took the Honda-engined BAR 006 to second position in the 2004 F1 Constructors Championship, with Sato scoring 34 WC points. There are many good drivers who have never scored a single point in Formula One. Sato's career before F1 tells us that he was a race winner and a championship winner. His F1 career came to an abrupt end because the cash-strapped Super Aguri team pulled out of the 2008 season after just four races, not "because of his erratic driving and for continually crashing into other drivers". I doubt that Sato - a self-effacing, decent, honest man - far from the Prima Donna type perhaps best illustrated by a certain Mr L. Hamilton, would claim to be the fastest and least mishap prone racer out there, but he has proved himself good enough, and in the right place enough, to win the Indy 500 whilst still being regarded as an underdog. And for that I take my hat off to him.

No, I think he just doesn't know anything much about motor sport.

If we're playing, here's a couple of shots to prove Takata - like most Japanese companies - were working on Christmas Day 1969. Nissan part number was 86800-E7201, and I think it should be fairly easy to guess on what variant of S30-series Z this was stock equipment:

Sato took the 2002 Jordan Honda to fifth at Suzuka in 2002 (in a season where the car broke more often than not), following it up with a sixth at his one-off run in the 2003 BAR Honda at Suzuka the following year. In 2004 he scored 34 world championship points in the BAR Honda when teamed up with Jenson Button. in 2001 Sato won the British Formula Three championship, the Macau Grand Prix and the prestigious annual World F3 Masters event at Zandvoort in Holland. I don't think he needed anybody to teach him how to drive before he took his career to the IndyCar series. Maybe you're confusing him with Alex Rossi?

Interesting, but a more than slightly non-sequitur post considering what went before it. What series, what races, what years even? I've been trying to elicit an answer regarding some cars that were - allegedly - "...just the best and far superior to anything else in the world concerning production sports cars at that time." So far no specifics... Meanwhile, as I have already pointed out, what manufacturer totally dominated the FIA International Cup for GT Cars during the period when the S30-series Z was being sold? Answer: Porsche. I have mucho respect for the likes of BRE and BSR, but they largely concentrated on national series races. However much we admire the engineering of their cars we can't compare them like-for-like with Porsche's best. Sure they punched above their weight some of the time, but they were not comparable to the might of a full fat factory effort that was sending cars all over the world to race and had a fleet of specialised homologation models to sell in their showrooms.

I'd say more like 1971, if not even early 1972. Most of those drivers were assembled for a similar shoot with the photos published in 'Auto Sport Young' (a special edition of Auto Sport magazine) in early March 1971, and the difference in hairstyle/length is noticeable. They were pretty much all following a trend for longer hair at the time and I reckon your photo was taken later than that shoot.

"...no Euro designed production car could match it." In what terms? You state "superior design", but what does that mean? What exactly was superior? I'm honestly wondering if you have come into close contact with any of Porsche's premium models of the period? I'm thinking 911S, 911T/R, 911R, 911S/T, 911RS 2.7 Carrera, 911 RSR 2.8 (how about the IROC RSRs?), 911 RS 3.0, 911 RSR 3.0 Carrera? That list takes us up to the end of 1974, when the S30-series Zs being sold in North America were still being offered with a choice of 4 speed manual or Automatic transmissions (FFS!). Porsche's stock-in-trade was making and selling sports cars, racing them and winning. They out-engineered, out-homologated and out-raced their opposition because they focused pretty much solely on doing so. You might well believe the S30-series Z is "a superior car to Porsche's offerings at the time", but I don't see any evidence whatsoever to support the belief. I guess a world that has space for Creationists has to have space for other kinds of fantasy too. By the way, I'm still nonplussed by the following statement: "...the US development of the racing Z covering S30 to Z31. .....those race cars were just the best and far superior to anything else in the world concerning production sports cars at that time." ...as you don't appear to have answered my repeated questions as to what specific cars it refers to. Considering you have now refined your claim to refer specifically to the S30-series Z I reckon it should now be easier to answer, no? So, a racing Z "production sports car" developed in the US that was "the best and far superior to anything else in the world" at the time. What specific car, please? You won't find many more loyal advocates for the S30-series Z than me, but I'm a realist who has been watching Porsches race from the late 1960s (yes, before the S30-series Z existed). To acknowledge Porsche's historic success in their chosen field - specialising in sports/GT cars - is not to diminish Nissan's excellent achievement in creating the S30-series Z. Two very different companies with quite different product ranges and philosophies. Being loyal to one should not make you blind to the merits of the other.