26th-Z

Oh, you guys... that car needs thousands for all sorts of other things. It's a "barn find"! I just don't see the rust as a deal-breaker for a restoration.

I don't know what the red thing rocker switch is in the console. No big deal. Nor do I think the rust pictures are a big deal. The floor picture looks pretty bad, but I have seen much, much worse. Hell. I OWN much, much worse. This whole rust thing is overrated to me. Just fix it.

Thanks for the pictures, Kats! Very interesting - different material and construction technique. I would have guessed the black one is a reproduction type.

Hey Carl - thanks for the references! I didn't realize how much is on-line, but :stupid: What a wonderful romp through the archive on Datsun Lane. I guess you can buy the articles individually, but I'm having a moment with it, evidently. I saw several articles I would like to have about Datsun history. And tell me more about the "First 240Z" picture! I had not seen this one before. Or am I having another moment?

Thanks for all the info, guys.

I believe the key to this conversation rests with the study of the North American Testing Program conducted between October and December 1969. Kats has compiled a ton of information and videos about this event and a search through the archives will confirm what I am about to say. Yes, it is very peculiar that so little information exists about the New York "International Preview". What has been very well documented is that by mid-October 1969, two HLS30 test cars had been delivered for testing purposes, the cars were silver, and the Japanese testing team was lead by Eiji Osawa and Hitoshi Uemura. It is possible that one of those cars may have been flown to New York but there is no evidence of it. What evidence does exist is that the cars were shown in a Los Angeles show early November. Attached is an article from AutoWeek / Competition Press dated mid-November. Take a close look at the pictures. That car is one of the test cars. I have heard all sorts of "information" about the preview in New York without any evidence or description about the event. And it has been incorrectly described as the New York Auto Show for way too long. We have all sorts of information about the test program, conducted at the same time, but no publicity documentation. Am I wrong, or is this "international preview in New York" just a bunch of gab and gossip? Carl, you have an original invitation, don't you?

Yes, I was surprised to read that HLS30-01777 was sold in March. Does March 14th mean you ordered it Carl? Or did you take delivery? Where did you buy it from?

I was just going to say but Carl stated it correctly; the New York Auto Show is in the spring, April. The October 1969 thing was not the New York Auto Show. Cool pictures from Chicago!

Dear Chris: We thank you for your expression of inquiry for the Big Shake and Tsumami We are well accustomed tremour but this time was extra!!! We were really shaken, surprizingly not only well shaken but with disastrous Tsunami almost all around the shore of Japanese Islands!! It is the first time experience in my 100 years of life!!!　However we were lucky enough only shaken a little bit more than usual tremour!!! And no harm only book shelf was collapsed and spred allround and the clock on the wall distorted, no harm on any body among our family of 46 memers luckyly. Even Tokyo transportation was in heavy turmoil but solved in the midnight. The real big damage were in the northern part of the main island by the Tsunami,big tidal wave!! We will know how big and how long would it take to recover!! I was quit fatal and will cause big lossof the country. We will try to help them. I thank you for your kind thought. Your friend, Y.K. From: Yutaka Katayama Please tell friends we were all safe and no injury from the shake and Tsunami in Tokyo. Thank you.

Start with this web page http://zhome.com/History/ZColorGallary/index.html I'll bet you get several more pictures. Chris

The only thing I can think of is a door pocket I have seen on the rallye cars used to hold maps. I wouldn't necessarily call that installation "aftermarket" but it would not be considered stock production.

Brilliant read and I love the photographs. Makes one simply want to slap the whiners who complain about rust! I cannot help but think that a comprehensive derusting technique such as we have seen with baking or electrolytic immersion process would have helped. Just saw the results of a similar restoration effort. This 1960 Alfa Romeo took Best of Show two weeks ago at the Sarasota Exotic Car Festival. Yes, it CAN be done if you put your mind to it. Thanks Alan!

Perhaps we have another Bill on our hands!

I like your idea, Ron! Club poster group shot. Great idea. Have fun with it!

Way to go! Very nice...

Yea, I was just reading this thread. Congrats!

Oh, I just gotta jump in! We're missing some collector car true-isms. Collector cars for investment purposes generally return the same rate as fine art, gold coins, antiques. Over time, the price will fluctuate but in the long run the investment should increase. Collector cars are not about supply and demand. The demand is low - comparitively. Although the supply argument is relatively legit, plenty of high volume production automobiles are highly sought and valuable. Carl makes a good point about comparing production cars to limited build cars - you just can't. Different game. Collector cars don't have to be stock. Modified cars can be much more valuable in certain circumstances. Perfect example is ZRush. And finally, something Brock Yates once wrote about the subject. That generally speaking, if the car was high priced and valuable originally, it probably is now.

Just learned this: Walt posted on this site for a while some years ago. I knew him from his time with the Racing Beat Mazda RX-7s. Former Hunterdon resident Walt Bohren, Mazda car racer for many years, drowns in British Virgin Islands February 10, 2011 Hunterdon County Democrat Former Hunterdon resident Walt Bohren, an auto racer in national events in the ‘70s & ‘80s, died Tuesday in an apparent accidental drowning near Tortola, in the British Virgin Islands. Bohren, 63, who had retired to Tortola & lived on his catamaran, was last seen alive by his girlfriend when he left their boat & took a small dinghy to go ashore, according to a report on speedtv.com. He was found floating in the water Tuesday evening & an autopsy is being performed by the BVI medical examiner to determine his cause of death. Bohren was a son of Frank Bohren, the civil engineer who headed the Flemington firm of Bohren & Bohren Engineering Associates for many years. Frank, who lived in Raritan Township & was the township engineer for many years, died in 2000. Early in Walt’s racing career, Frank was his financial backer. Bohren was a staple in the early years of International Motor Sports Association (IMSA) racing, competing during its formative stages in the Baby Grand division. Known for his association w/Mazda, Bohren drove Mazda RX-2s & RX-3s before graduating to RX-7s, which dominated the GTU category for nearly a decade. Driving for the Racing Beat team, Bohren won 5 GTU races en route to the 1980 championship. Another notable win came in the GTU class at the 1981 12 Hours of Sebring at the wheel of an RX-7, speedtv.com reported. Bohren moved to bigger cars for the 1984 IMSA season, driving V8-powered American machinery in the GTO class for the Dingman Bros. He would win his 2nd race for the team that year in Miami, & would also make his 1 & only start at Le Mans, sharing a Rondeau M482 w/American Jim Mullen & French ace Alain Ferte where they finished 13th. He would later race for Buz McCall’s Skoal Bandit Racing GTO team, driving a Chevrolet Camaro thru 1987, his last season in IMSA. By the end of his IMSA career, Bohren had earned 8 victories in GTU & GTO competition. His final race would come in a Porsche at the 1996 12 Hours of Sebring, altho he would later test a Daytona Prototype prior to the 2005 Rolex 24 At Daytona before hanging up his helmet. He got his start in racing in 1969 w/motorcycles, then in 1973 opened his auto racing career in a Formula Ford before switching to Mazdas in 1975. At the time, his "day" job was selling cars for the Z&W Mazda dealership near Princeton. In 1976, he sped his Mazda to victory in the Daytona 100, the final duel in the Challenge 100 series that year. Funeral arrangements have not been announced.

Quite the contrary. Power to weight ratio is EXACTLY the point. Perfect example of that is the fact that the 1970 240Z will outrun your ZX. Read the road test reports.

More from the article... Just 31 at the time, Yoshihiko Matsuo had mouthed off to senior executives at Nissan Motor Co., expressing his disdain for the company's P410 Bluebird. "They told me, 'If you can do better, why don't you prove it?' So I went into the studio and came up with the 240Z. I didn't even have approval to do the project. I just went ahead and did it." "In those days," Matsuo continues, "I had to do it all - the design, the engineering, the packaging. You didn't just design. You had to show that the car sould be manufactured, and it had to be all the correct dimensions for customers." Now I'm not posting this as any gospel but rather evidence of "it depends on who you are talking to".

I would like to add something to this drifting conversation. Just got a copy of "Automotive News" dated August 30, 2010 with coverage of the Nashville convention. The article, by Lindsay Chappell, was mostly an interview with Yoshihiko Matsuo and Randy Rodriguez, designers of the 240Z and 370Z respectively. It would have been impossible for Matsuo to imagine such a conversation 40 years ago. In the mid-1960s when the Z was in development, Nissan barely existed in North America, having only recently begun selling here under the Datsun name. The company was loosely organized in the United States, and US sales were marginal to a company historically focused on Japanese consumers. Communications involving American dealers, their new factory officials and the Japanese corporation were spotty. Datsun's senior U.S. sales executive at the time, Yutaka Katayama, traveled back to Japan regularly in hopes of getting the parent company to be more enthusiastic about American sales. On one visit in the 1960s, he saw the Z project. "Katayama came into the studio and saw what I was working on," Matsuo recalls. "He was really excited. He said; 'I have to have this car in America. I can sell this car." Katayama urged Nissan to approve a larger engine for the U.S. version of Matsuo's sports car. When management refused, Katayama used his connections with Japan's powerful Ministry of International Trade and Industry to pressure Nissan. Katayama got his way, but he made few friends at the company. Nissan seemed to be ambivalent about Matsuo's car. The company had allocated factory production for it of just 300 cars a month. "He was very enthusiastic for the Z," Matsuo says. "He told the company he could sell 3,000 a month in the U.S. We were all very excited about his numbers. "But after he left, we said; ' He doesn't know what he is talking about. He'll never sell that many.'" Katayama's robust U.S. forcast would have required Nissan to invest in plant capacity on a completely different scale - hardly a likely move for a company that doubted the strength of the U.S. market for Japanese cars. "We guaranteed him 3,000 cars a month," Matsuo admits. "But behind his back, we only planned for 1,500 a month."

A model of Paul Newman's 1976 Datsun 510 B-Sedan is here http://www.motorsportcollector.com/cart/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=3_135&products_id=4140

I would recommend "Datsun Z - Fairlady to 280Z" by Brian Long as basic reading. That is probably THE most accurate comprehensive book on the S30 type; in English. The pictures I use most often come from a Japanese publication; Car Graphic magazine, issue 02, 1970. Mr. Matsuo told me that a great deal of the information in the article came from Yoshida san. However, the article is the most comprehensive description I have seen on the subject of styling development. It is all in Japanese though.

That is the one I have. Geese Mike! That's a lot of jackets! Your're the jacket meister!