26th-Z

Carl, 8-track tapes are quite available, new and used. I have a brand new Datsun option 8-track player for the head unit in a 510. Interested? I'll even throw in "Alice's Restaurant". Frankly, it's more difficult to find an original player like Kats' that still works. Mine works. (Edit) BTW the part # for the player I have is 99993-00206-80 "8 track deck" universal chassis. Brand new in the Datsun box.

As far as I know, Kats, very few people have one of the 8-track decks for their Z. This is one of those things the Japanese got that the American export version did not. Very nice video.

Great pictures, Kats! Brass tubing, eh? Great idea. I have one of those hoses. I'll look and see if it has a part # on it.

Hey. Ya'll have a good time. I love the Mitty. Sorry to miss it this year. The weather will probably be real good since I'm not going!

I don't think they have fact checkers at Hemmings, evidently. IMO any mention of Goertz is absurd. But then, this is my hobby and I should know what I'm talking about. Thank you. The conversation about Mr. K makes me smile also. Please put into perspective that Mr. K is a very accomplished marketing genious. Marketing himself is his livelyhood and he is more than a pro at it. One can easily see it is his passion. He is also one hell of a nice guy. Yes, Gus, I did write a book (if you could call it that) on my research into the Vintage Z program in 1996 - 1997.

I would like to ad a couple of comments in support of Alan's post. Fact - Nissan was already exporting cars to the United States before Mr. K arrived. Fact - Mr. K was sent to California to conduct a marketing survey, nothing more. Mr. K was a marketing and advertising executive. His ideas about promoting the Nissan brand were fairly cutting edge to typical Japanese business models of the time. This is but one of the "inside corporate Nissan" issues Alan mentions. The other issue which is far larger, quite misunderstood by Americans, and hardly mentioned in the Hemmings article is the conflict inside the corporate world between business managers and labor unions. The issue is so large and complex that it is difficult to just label it as a conflict. One must study the business practices of the Japanese industrial complex during post WWII reconstruction to properly identify what is simply described as "friction". It was far more than friction. What Alan is pointing out is that what we understand about Mr. K is the way Americans would understand something so complex and outside of our cultural realm. The Hemmings article is a broad stroke of the brush and not anything close to an educated discussion of the circumstantial environment Mr. K prospered in. Ok, I'm out of things to say. Good post, Alan.

A very nice post, Carl. Something we have not discussed in some time and I am glad to see it come up again for the newer crowd on this site. I shall write to Hemmings as well. One thing that should be brought to attention, at least on this site is that the original design studies involved a convertible sports car and not the GT model studies linked to Goertz. Here are some pictures from 1966. Another interesting point is the similarity the S30 prototype study in 1967 had to the Maserati Mistal prototype. I recall a conversation with Mr. Matsuo about his shock at seeing the car and how coincidently similar it was to his own work at the time.

Hi Kats, I am surprised to discover that your sister car is silver also. Lately, I have discussions with several members about sister (twins) cars being the same color. You provide another excellent example! I wonder if Nissan, in the begining, produced cars that were the same color in groups of two or three or if this is just coincidence. Does anyone know of triplets? Chris

The kink in the water tube is certainly different from what I am used to. I don't think that would match the obviously early (1970) air box. Four screw round top carbs came with a drain plug in the float bowl and without. If the float bowls do not have drain plugs, the carbs are very early (1969). IF they do have drain plugs, they are the later type.

No, I had not seen your post, Mike. Cool tag! Ron, I saved all of our correspondence in a WORD file and added the pictures I scanned and collected to the text. The file is rather large because of the pictures - 9.7 mb but our conversations really gave me a much better, clearer understanding of how the cars were built and what all these date stamps mean. I can see that in this web site environment the topic is rather obscure, but what would you think about publishing our e-mail conversations for the interest of it?

I can't get back into the link either. It worked when I posted. But build date stamp was my search. Good ol' stroll down memory lane, this topic.

I typed "build date stamp" in the search box and came up with this list of articles. Great reading for those interested in the production techniques at the time. http://www.classiczcars.com/forums/search.php?searchid=566943 This thread should be referenced in.

That's a pretty cool find, Arnie. The E4100 is indeed the whole console assembly. My North American parts book jumps to E4155 at 2/71 however my Japanese parts book makes the jump to E4150. There is no E4635 number listed in either. I like Ron's answer.

Carl, I luv ya 2 pieces but the fact is that the 240Z never took on the reigning C-Production 911 of Milt Minter. Minter won the national championship in Daytona in 1969, but by 1970 the Porsche effort was represented with 9 Porsche 914-6s. The C-Production national championship was the highlight of the 1970 ARRC. Held at Road Atlanta for the first time, the fierce battle staged the Datsun 240Z against the best of Triumph, Porsche and Lotus. Porsches were fielded by Peter Gregg, Alan Johnson, Ritchie Ginther and Elliot Forbes-Robinson. Five Datsun 240Zs were entered, driven by John Morton, Bob Sharp, John McComb, Jim Fitzgerald, and Jack Scoville. As if this wasn't enough, two Triumph TR-6s were entered; Bob Tullius and Kas Kastner. Kastner did not start, however. Tullius took an early lead and exchaged it for several laps with John Morton before falling back on lap seven and finally retiring on lap eleven of the nineteen lap race. Bob Sharp finished second and John McComb rounded out a Datsun Sweep. The Porsche 914-6s were never in contention. Worth mentioning is that John Morton's pole qualifying time was 0.7 sec. faster than the fastest B-Production qualifying Corvette.

Does it have any casting marks or identification? Size? Way cool junkyard find and nice paint job!

What are the advantages to QQ plates and why would you get them? Seems like there are all these restrictions and possible violations just to save a couple of bucks on the registration cost?

My guess is that the model is 1:24 or 1:25 scale. Probably one of the BRE model kits because of the Libre wheels. Fortunately, I don't need something expensive like that. I have one of those in full scale.

Frank's car is one of three manufactured in 1981 in that color scheme - black and silver. The three were supposedly made for Nissan executives. Two were shipped to Canada and one to Hawaii. Frank's car is Canadian and sports 28,000 original miles. Quite a piece.

Carl, That's a Bentley.

And the crowd they were running with.

Pics of the Zs.

Yes, the pics are from the Festival of Speed in St. Petersburg last Saturday. Beautiful day. Great show. Frank Rygel brought his ultra rare 280ZX. Of, course ZWolf was there with both his cars. It was good to see that many Zs mixed in with the crowd of exotics. The Festival of Speed is getting better every year. I'll post some pics.

Just picked up a copy of "Sports Car Market" magazine published in Portland, OR and thought of this thread. www.sportscarmarket.com Check out the site as they discuss cars in the terms Carl posted. They use +/- indications to describe what may be the grey areas between condition ratings. I also found thier explanations and grading of particular cars to be a little more lenient than the sounds of descriptions posted above. For instance, their description of a #1 car or a #1- included particular flaws or "nitpicking points". Also this graph describing current market value of the 240Z in America.

I picked up a copy of "Sports Car Market" magazine the other day and thought of this thread. "Sports Car Market" is published in Portland, OR. www.sportscarmarket.com They had an article about the Porsche 914 which included this value graph. There is another thread about current market values. I'll go looking for it. CW- (This graph in no way implies that Her Majesty the 26th or Princess 27th are by any means cheap sluts. They are worth far more than any Porsche and much more than what the graph shows)

That Datsun logo is available on eBay. I have seen it used on hubcaps before.