HS30-H

Pop back to 1969 and tell Nissan what a big mistake they are making...

They should have been short discussions. What evidence is there of body coloured OEM front and rear spoilers on these cars?

I think you should be careful of reading too much into what you see. A 432 was displayed on the central rotating platform of the Nissan display (it was - in effect - the 'star' of the Nissan show stand) but there was a 432-R, very likely the same one that was moved onto the banked wall display, on display elsewhere on the large Nissan stand area. There was a Fairlady Z-L as well as a brace of other Nissan models on display too. Looking at photos of the show stand it is clear that they were moving cars around on the stand area through the 14 days of the show. Additionally, some of the photos we see published were from the press preview opening before the doors were opened to the general public, and some of the displays are not yet complete. I feel you still don't seem to be grasping what was actually happening there. The LR24 was the favoured racing engine for the HS30/HLS30 and the GR8C/GR8S was the favoured race engine for the PS30-SB. The first factory race and rally prepped versions of the HS30/HLS30 used what was essentially a 432-R bodyshell with an HS30/HLS30 chassis number. You might try an experiment tonight when you go to bed: Move your pillow and sleep 180 degrees from where you normally do, and see if you can have a dream where "the favoured race bodyshell for the LR24 engine was the PZR type". If it doesn't work on the first night, keep trying... Displayed "unintentionally"? Why would you describe it as unintentional? It may be rather incongruous in that race display context, but my feeling is that the car was placed there - indeed, was on display at all - most definitely with intent. Arch intent, perhaps. It's my personal belief (no more than that at this point) that we are glimpsing some evidence of the politicking and tug-o-war that was going on between Nissan Japan and Nissan Motors USA regarding the world debut of the new S30-series Z models and the pointedly-labelled 'Fairlady Z Export Model' Datsun 240Z in particular. I believe Yutaka Katayama did not want to have his thunder stolen by the 1969 Tokyo Motor Show display, and worked hard to arrange the press shows at the Pierre Hotel in New York and in Los Angeles in some reaction to that. Katayama simply didn't have a suitable large scale public Auto show in the USA to coincide with the dates of the Tokyo Motor Show, and I can't imagine him enjoying the fact that the new S30-series Z would go on display in Japan before he'd had a chance to show one in his market. There might also be a clue in the way that the 'Kaku U' North American Testing trip could be seen as turning into just as much a demonstration/ promotion tour for dealers as proper 'testing' (which was - in any case - being carried out in Japan). We know there was some late wrangling over the emblems/badging of that 'Fairlady Z Export Model', and that the 'Datsun' and '240Z' emblems were very late being finalised and productionised. Yet here was a 'Datsun 240Z' badged car - looking for all the world like the finished article - on display to the world in Tokyo whilst the car(s) that NMC USA had at its disposal for press and promotion were clearly unfinished and unbadged. Messages being sent? Some needling going on? I would not be surprised. Don't forget that on 18th October 1969 there was a Press Show at Nissan's Ginza, Tokyo HQ where all the models - including a PS30-SB Fairlady Z432-R and an HLS30 'Datsun 240Z' were on display, so Katayama had already been trumped by the time the the 1969 Tokyo Motor Show opened its doors to what would be over 1.5 million visitors...

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Judging from your questions, I'd say that the particular car in question is not the right one for you. It has many non-standard details, and is missing some parts which can be hard to find and would requite some work to take it back to stock specs. It was modified to look a little like a 432-R model, but to be frank it was a rather half-hearted effort. It even has an S130 plastic bonnet emblem... But a good driver car, and the so-called 'collectors' who are looking for investment value and all the screw heads to line up will probably be avoiding it.

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It's not much, but it's better than nothing: I believe the wheels were Japanese aftermarket brand 'Jaguar' widened steels rather than TOPY.

Blue, I suggest you try doing a bit more in-depth research before you post. Cut, paste and hope isn't going to cut it. Your choice of thread title says it all, really. It might make the likes of Grannyknot orgasm into his popcorn but it doesn't stand up to much scrutiny.

You've gone off half-cocked. You started out with a certain premise, but had little to no understanding of the context surrounding the race in question or the bigger scenario behind it. Fail. I think you need to do a LOT more in-depth research before trying the same trick again.

So, you think this was the L24's first race...?

Thanks for the effort Mike, but machine translation of Japanese to English is still in the stone age when it comes down to stuff like this and the results are proof of that. As I pointed out before, that's a personal - one man - blog. The subject requires much deeper research from wider sources in order to be properly understood.

Newsflash for Grannyknot: The race in question was won by a 432-R pretending to be a 240Z so that it didn't get disqualified. You seem to have overlooked the fact that L24-engined cars weren't around to take part in the first ever race contested by an S30-series Z, or the first race won by an S30-series Z (READ THE NUMBERS). If you think you knew better you could pop back to 1969 and tell Nissan just how silly they were being putting Murayama's precious engine into their new American Sports Car as it would only lead to tears and confusion. And really, if the first post in this thread convinced you of anything it only goes to show that you didn't know enough to come to a view in the first place. The facts don't belong to me, and whatever I say about the 432/432-R won't change what they were, what they were homologated to achieve, what they did actually achieve in period and what they mean in context today. It's a key part of the S30-series Z story, despite the efforts of people like yourself who seem to want to diminish it for some unknown reason? What's that all about, really? Isn't it just the fact that you don't like the usual messenger? How about you pop up on one of Kats' threads and tell him his 432 is "not special"...? See how that pans out for you. My prediction is that you might find a few people to 'Like This' but not a lot else will happen. Don't worry though, you're not alone as you have a fantasy conspirator in my parallel universe Porsche thread. He's busy telling everyone that the Porsche 911R (Nissan's reference point for the 432-R) was also "not special", with similar reaction...

You'd better believe it. I don't want to read flippant comments dissing these cars or the people who were racing them. The title of this thread and the first post doesn't reflect the true scenario. Many of the guys taking part in this race were little more than enthusiastic amateurs in home-prepped cars. One of the 'six' mentioned in the thread title was a white 432 (not a 432-R) prepared, entered and driven by amateurs Isamu MIURA and Hajime SAKURAI. This is how their race ended on lap 35: Sakurai was 20 years old. The crash ended his race, but also put him in hospital with injuries severe enough to end his working career at that point. Sakurai had been a promising amateur racer marked out as a coming talent, but never raced again...

More to the point, it would have been nice to see it mentioned in the context of your original thread, especially as you coloured it as some kind of L24 vs S20 battle. There was an S20-powered sedan, punching well above its weight, but you didn't even tip your hat to it. You didn't mention the fact that the winning car had been outqualified by four other cars including that GT-R, all of them S20-powered, and hadn't taken the fastest race lap either. Why not? Hasemi's loyalty was firmly in the Murayama camp. At that time he was a Skyline man. He was right in that the 432-R body wasn't stiff enough on its own (it was supposed to have a full multi-point cage...) but ALL the cars we are talking about were 'baggy'. The HS30/HLS30 certainly wasn't hugely better than the PS30/PS30-SB in that respect. Hasemi was talking in retrospect about the engines of course. The LR24 engine wasn't eligible for the race categories that the S20 (both in GT-R and 432/432-R guises) was designed to take part in. The Japanese market wasn't due to get the L24-engined HS30 models until late 1971, so there was no imperative to push the HS30 through domestic race development. Meanwhile, Nissan was gearing up to take part in a selected international rallying program with what amounted to 432-R bodied cars running LR24 engines (they were already testing them, and had one running on the roads around Monte Carlo in January 1970...) except they were running HS30 and HLS30 chassis prefixes (that being what was eligible to race, and what Nissan was selling...), so it's not like Nissan had their own internal conflict about what was 'best' (they had more than one horse for each course...). Some of the shade being thrown at the S20 engine (here and in other threads) in favour of the L24 doesn't seem to take into account that there was very little stock about the race and rally LR24s. I see weight being mentioned, but a full-house LR24 in race guise isn't going to be much different in total weight than a full house S20 in race guise, and the weight distribution of the LR24 is quite different too (much taller, and with a lot of weight biased to one side of the chassis with induction and exhaust both being on the left side). This particular event was hardly apples-to-apples though. In fact, the Oppama team got what they were pushing for and it was something more of a political demonstration based on practicality than anything else. The intra-company wrangling was coming to a head and the way forward was clear. Painting it as some kind of simplistic 'S20=complex rubbish, L24=simple and superior' equation (yes I'm looking at you Grannyknot) is to ignore all those politics and the even more complex battle of wills that was going on behind the scenes. Even JAF were involved, changing the race classes and eligibility rules to suit what was coming. You bet there's more to this than looking at one race will at first reveal. Yes there were crashes, mechanical failures, punctures, the whole gamut. 1000km races are always going to have their fair share of drama and Force Majeure. However your description is overly harsh considering the big difference between qualifying and what happened in the race. Painting this as complete domination by one car is way wide of the mark considering that the win for the LR24-engined car was the politically expedient - and somewhat telegraphed - result on the cards. Like I say, politics... About the swept volume/capacity thing: A 5% increase in homologated capacity was legal for GT-II, so the LR24 engine was running bigger than its stock configuration. Race organisers (and JAF...) were not necessarily party to the exact capacity unless the engine was protested or suspected way oversize, so the capacity was usually recorded as stock.

These cars didn't have any fans, let alone electric radiator fans. The wires you are looking at are from the 432-R's wiring harness. Your list of specs (it's more like a guess sheet, and should have a ? after each item) mentioned "stock wiring harness" (stock for what?) and "stock battery, alternator, distributor, radiator, coil, starter". The distributor isn't 'stock', and nor is the coil. The car was running electronic ignition. The radiator is an (aluminium) 432 item.

You are - quite simply - completely out of your depth. What - really - what value is there in your first post on this topic? That 'diamond rings and oil paintings' meme is all about the road cars. It still holds true (and don't forget it's usually an answer to somebody telling us that the 432 is "sh*t"). You get something put in front of you about one particular Japanese race (apparently it's news to you too...) and it's like you just realised that a G-Shock tells the time better than a Girard Perregaux. Hold the front page, huh? Perhaps there's a parallel-universe style scenario on a Porsche forum somewhere with somebody saying that the 2 litre Porsche 911R was "dumped" because the 2.7RS was "better". Hopefully the Porsche forum has one or two people who understand just how stupid that is... As for my comments regarding the real story behind that particular race (the context following tragedy...) you seem to have - once again - missed the point. Who said "the winner should not be taken into account"? Not me. Do you know what I'm referring to? My guess is that you have no clue. By the way, if anyone wants to see the original 'net based source of much of this thread, it's from this personal blog: http://vital.sakura.ne.jp/NISSAN SKYLINE KGC10 HP/index.html ...and this page in particular: http://vital.sakura.ne.jp/NISSAN SKYLINE KGC10 HP/S30kei.html ....which means it's already been filtered and weighted with some personal opinion. It is worth taking that into account.

I own the ex-Masami KUWASHIMA Fairlady 240ZG, which he imported to the UK from Japan as his personal transport when he was competing in European F3 and F2 in the early 1970s.

(My bolded highlights) A couple of questions: Who was/is calling that 432R a "lightened 240Z"? The car was entered as an HS30 '240Z' because that was the only way it could qualify for the GTS-II class rules. Putting a different engine in a PS30-prefixed body would have bumped the car up into the R-III class (where they didn't want to be) so they called it an HS30 and stayed in GTS-II. You write: "The L24 had no competition". Had you mentioned any of the other competitors in the race, this might statement might start to look a little more tenuous. Yes they won the race, and that's what the Works team set out to do. However, there's some extra context here if you take into account the fact that pole position was taken by TOHIRA and TERANISHI in the #32 432-R (almost two seconds faster than TAKAHASHI and KUROSAWA in the L24-engined #31 hybrid, who took 5th fastest in qualifying) and they crashed out of the race early after being involved in somebody else's accident. The winning car was run close to the finish by the #54 PGC10 4-door Skyline GT-R of SUNAKO and HASEMI running in the TS-III class, who incidentally turned in a quicker fastest race lap than the winning car, which they had also outqualified. No competition...? I think it's also worth pointing out that framing this event as being one L24-engined car vs six S20-engined 432-Rs is to take it hugely out of context, but that those six 432-Rs were not even equal amongst themselves. The two 'hot' Works-entered 432-Rs were the #32 car of TOHIRA and TERANISHI (which took pole, but was taken out by a non-fault crash) and the #30 car of TOSHIMORI and HOSHINO (which had taken second on the grid but ran into trouble during the race, which cost it a couple of laps). The other 432s and 432-Rs in the race were all privateer efforts in cars nowhere near the development/parts level of the Works cars. The KUWASHIMA / TAKAHASHI 432 was even running steel wheels! "As an epilogue to the race, there was great disappointment for the S20 engine". Huh?! Says who? In July 1970 - the date of the race you cite - Nissan's Murayama works team were already well on the way to record-breaking run of domination in the Japanese touring car championship, and in the middle of taking 40+ consecutive victories. They ended up with 50+ victories with S20-powered PGC10 and KPGC10 Skyline GT-Rs. Your statement is - in this context - complete nonsense and has the whiff of a pre-conceived agenda about it. I find it interesting that you would frame the victory for the L24 (it was an 'L24R' actually...) powered 432-R as some kind of disappointment? Why is that? Nissan's Oppama works team certainly didn't find it a disappointment. Why would they? It was - after all - their car and their engine... Anybody who is seriously interested in the topic of Japanese racing during this period would be well advised to dig a little more deeply than one issue of Auto Sport Japan's '200 Great Races' series for the full story. Big topic.

There are so many driver names that require correction, I'd better list them up: Family name in capitals: *"Kitano Yuan" = Moto KITANO *"Masahiro Hasayami" = Masahiro HASEMI *"Kenji Tsubairi" = Kenji TOHIRA *"Teranishi Teranishi" = Takatoshi TERANISHI *"Takahashi Kokoh" = Takahashi KUNIMITSU *"Saburo Koumuma" = "Saburo KOINUMA *"Ishii Kazuo" = Kazuo ISHII *"Sakurai Ichi" = Hajime SAKURAI

And Blue, what's the true purpose of this thread? You've titled it "L24 Battles Six S20s. Guess who wins?", but why? You seem to be framing it as a simplistic L24 vs S20 fight, but it wasn't actually anything as simplistic as that. What's your real agenda here? The answer to the question posed by the thread title is, in fact, the latest Works car, with the 'ace' Works drivers behind the wheel... . You might like to remind yourself that the car in question was still in fact a 432R, running all the 432R-specific homologated parts and having the benefit of all the factory team development carried out up to that point. The L24 being installed in that chassis was far (far!) from stock, with special Works-developed crank, rods, pistons, head and many other details, and was running at a displacement of over 2500cc (yes, 25% greater than the S20) allowed by the GTS-II class rules. You can hardly frame it as L24 = great, S20 = $^!#, can you? Not only that, but I don't see any mention of one of the key points; The intra-company politics regarding the S20 engine and the fact that the very recently ex-Prince faction at Murayama regarded the S20 as 'their' engine and had effectively blocked the Nissan Works faction at Oppama from the better developments, updates and trick parts that the Murayama based team were using on their Skyline GT-R race cars. Murayama were not involved in racing the L6, so there was no potential for a reciprocal arrangement. Discussing the race career of the 432R without taking into account any of the Murayama/Oppama politics is to miss much of the point. And with regards specifically to the 1970 Fuji 1000kn race, you missed the elephant in the room for the whole event. Is that because you chose not to mention it, or because you didn't know about it? The big clue is what that particular event was supposed to be, and what cars were supposed to be taking part in it but for a recent tragedy. It had a huge impact on the race, and who/what won it.... It really ought to be taken into account.

Christ, what a mess. That's Motoharu KUROSAWA on the left, and Kunimitsu TAKAHASHI on the right. This thread is going to be a real car crash. There are just so many mistakes and misunderstandings. Some really golden WTF moments.

Predicition: Values of diamond rings and oil paintings will most likely not drop through the floor just because somebody delivered a message telling you what you already should have known. :rimshot: