Many will tell you that I'm a 'matching numbers' purist, so what I'm about to say will seem odd:

It doesn't matter!

The near proto-S30 age of this chassis overrides the fact that the original engine may be lost for all time. If the car is restored with an L20 engine (remember, this is a home-market car)and an appropriate documented history, it will still be a far more historic/desirable car than any later model with non-matching numbers.

Agreed. The extreme low number of the chassis overrides any need to do a meticulous restoration that would have it in perfect condition. Just bringing it back to daily driver shape would still have it one of the most interesting Datsun cars in a museum. Especially if you can track some of the history of ownership and interview and document people's memories of the car.

I had a neighbor in Minneapolis that worked for Nissan in the R&D department. He worked on the design of the 350Z, and his specialty is Suspension. Well, not really in Minneapolis. His family was there, and he did a lot of his work there, but he flew to Japan for a lot of work. I called him up and harrassed him for everyone. He actually knows his stuff.

Anyways, the first 5 cars are generally test models. #1-3 are used for figuring out the tooling needed for mass production, and #4 & 5 are the tests for mass production. The cars go through all sorts of testing. Generally the first 5 are kept or crushed. A car or two is usually kept if they plan for improvements in the short-term. Those cars are then the template to design and put improvements on.

Likely #2 was the prototype that had improvements done on it for a couple years to see how they would work, and how what differences in tooling they would need to produce them. From the looks of the descrepencies, that seems to fit. Prototypes like that were the workhorses, not something to be respected, by the engineers. There are possibly some unusual minor features that never went into production or production MUCH later somewhere? I would love to own the car, to restore it by hand to as much as original as I could figure out!

In the Porsche world a prototype 914 was found in the Mojave desert. It was stolen from the guy who owned it by guys who knew what it was and sold to freind of mine. He got into a bit of trouble as he ignored police attempts to get a hold of him. The big thing about it and it was Chassis number 4 by the way, was that lots of things were different from the production cars. The turn signal lenses were one off as were many other things. The car was rusted as can be but my freind kept it and even wrote an artical about it for Excellence Magazine.

The point is that it would be nearly impossible and prohibitively expensive to restore the car unless it uses the parts that were ultimately production. The car is however, an interesting museum car.

My freind did jail time for possession of stolen property which ultimately was expunged. In case you're interested.

we gotta get this thing rolling...

Updates?

Kats,

Any update?

So, any new updates? Would love to see this to the finish!

Hello ,

I am really sorry about no-update.The car is belonging to my friend who lives in Ibaragi prefecture, 100miles north of Tokyo.

And the car has been sitting/sleeping the outside with a car cover,without any news.

I am thinking to go there and look the car,but no time to do that.And my friend also has no time to do something for the car.

Anyway I will let him know many many Z owners around the world want to know what happened to her...

kats

Looks like we'll need to get the "Save S30 #2" T-Shirts made up to save this Z, anyone know a good screen printer?

i live in wichita ks... I know of one here that does shirts for companies like Big Dog Motorcycles and our local Harley dealership as well as other people. if someone were to come up with a kick arse design I could get er done...

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A GPS reading would make for a nice Geocache expedition on the way through the area.

I just flew back to China from Nagoya (from a hotel right next to the Shinkansen Station!) so having GPS fix would let me go on a fruitful exploring expedition instead of floundering here in China. I get back to hear they are closing the offices for Four Days to participate in he Dragon Boat Festival. Hell, I could have done that in JAPAN! And being next to the Bullet Train, I could have literally been ANYWHERE in the country in a couple of hours...

I guess I'll just go down to the Bund in Shanghai and watch the boats race... Not the same as being in Japan free and clear for four days, though... >:^(

As I was going around, I was GPS Fixing all the car lots with classics I saw, junkyards, etc. Makes telling someone where to find stuff or check some stuff out easier if they have a GPS as well...

I have an early engine, trany, right door, rear hatch, and hood I will donate to the project. JLP