mysterious wide body kit

[veritech-z]

Yokohama/Advan have been involved with Japanese motorsports for a LONG time. I thought when you said pertinant, that you meant in as far as it was pertinant to the car in question. At Advan's homepage they have links to picture of their racing history by decade going back to the 70's, and there is nothing about our S30...I'd actually been hoping when I posted it up over here that HS30-H might know something about it, since he seems to be the keeper of the arcane lore so to speak...

[veritech-z]

I just got an email from Pacesetter corporation (owners of Monza) that said they had nothing whatsoever to do with this car, and were unable to offer any help. At least they wrote back...

[Pete84]

Any way to ask Advan / Yokohama if they ever sponsored such a car?

[Mr Camouflage]

I just got an email from Pacesetter corporation (owners of Monza) that said they had nothing whatsoever to do with this car, and were unable to offer any help. At least they wrote back...

How do you know they own Monza Corporation?

Why dont you ask Monza Corporation directly

http://www.monza.us/monza/index.html

Monza Corporation c/o Ita Inc.

40 White Lake Road

Sparta

NJ 07871

(973) 579-3400

(973) 579-3222

[veritech-z]

Huh. That's a completely different Monza Corporation than I was looking at...I assumed it was the Monza exhaust company, since they offer a header for the early Z car and all kinds of exhaust stuff. This is who I sent the email to:

http://www.pacesetterexhaust.com/ I guess I'll try those guys too.

I haven't tried to see if Advan really sponsored that car, but I think that they probably just sell those number plates the same way B&M and others do to everybody in the series. I did try to PM Alan (HS30-H), but his PM box is full.

[Mr Camouflage]

Stranger things have happened.

Maybe the guy works for Monza Corporation, so he got his company to kick in some cash for sponsorship?

I think here in Australia we had a car sponsored by an "escort service" once. Might have even been driven by Sam Newman?

[HS30-H]

I'd actually been hoping when I posted it up over here that HS30-H might know something about it, since he seems to be the keeper of the arcane lore so to speak...

Max,

I remember the original post over on hybridz.org, and I'm sorry to say that I knew nothing about this particular car then, and I know nothing more about it now.

I see that you have been searching for more information using the clues of 'Advan' and 'Monza Corporation' that appear on the car. Can I make some observations about that?

*The 'ADVAN' name appears on a race number on the car. It might be stating the obvious, but it seems pertinent to point out that this does not mean that Advan sponsored the car directly or even indirectly. Such number backgrounds and number packs are given out to competitors in races, and it does not always mean that Advan sponsored the race/series, or even that they supplied the 'control' tyre for that race/series. I've even seen these used on track day events in Japan, simply as a means to identifying the participating cars. Looking for data on this car through the Advan link is probably barking up the wrong tree. At the very least it is casting a net too wide.

*Likewise, the name 'Monza Corporation' appears on the car - but we have no way of knowing whether this was the name of the garage that built the car, or if they were some kind of sponsor. I've certainly never heard of a company in Japan with that name having any involvement in building S30-series Z based race or street cars, but that means nothing. There are tens of thousands of small operations in Japan that could put together something like this.

I think it highly unlikely that the 'Monza Corporation' involved has any direct links outside Japan - but that's just a gut feeling. They could be lot smaller than you might imagine...........

I'd also suggest using katakana input with a Japanese search engine rather than 'Romaji'. Try cutting and pasting モンザ　コーポレーション ( that's 'Monza Corporation' written phonetically in katakana characters ) and see what you can come up with. Might be a waste of time, but if you are prepared to wade through lots of dead ends you never know what might turn up. You might want to combine the search with the letter 'Z' or 'S30', or even 'S31'.

*I've never noticed a Z with such modifications running in any of the various Japanese race series, and I've kept an eye on many of them. The mods we can see ( let alone what we can't see ) would put it into some very specialised categories - none of which could be described as remotely 'historic' or conforming to the regs of series that I would normally follow. It seems more likely to have been something of a one-off local-built special for an 'anything goes' kind of series. Maybe even 'just' a track day special. Best to keep an open mind I guess.

Can I phone a friend?

[veritech-z]

Thanks for chiming in Alan, I figured if anybody would have seen it, it was going to be you. I'm really thinking this was a one off at this point. I never bothered with the Advan search avenue for exactly the reason you mentioned. That didn't look like a real sponsor to me. I was thinking that it was an exhibition piece more than a real race car (at best maybe a pace car of some sort), but it does look to me to have been based off of a production chassis and not a tube frame. I was thinking of trying to replicate it, and was sort of hoping that if it was commercially available I wouldn't have to. I'm thinking more that I would like to do some all the way around flares like on the white spirit garage car you've got in your album. this one for those who don't know:

[Tidoubleger24]

edited for clarity.

[veritech-z]

thanks for clearing that up

[e_racer1999]

my thoughts on this car: i personally don't think this car is a professional racer. i think it's somebody paying homage to great racers in the body style.

max, i think you were actually pretty close with the idea you mentioned earlier, and i'm surprised nobody else has chimed in on it. to me, it very much DOES look like somebody took fibreglass fenders and built around them. that would also explain the spacing between the headlight and the hood area.

[veritech-z]

The front fenders would be the easiest to do, it's just the rear that would make it hard to replicate this car. It doesn't look completely finished as it sits in these photos, so I really wonder how it finally came out. I really think that a car of that quality would have gotten a feature in a magazine somewhere, somewhen, but without an owner name, or even a real location to go on, I don't know if we'll ever know more than we do now.