Fairlady Z??? what the?

[Raven]

Hey guys, just a quik one. I dont understand what you mean by a Fairlady Z, what is it?? I know of the Dastun Fairlady, referd to as the Datsun Sports, cause my dad owns one but Fairlady Z, are you just makeing this uup or what???

Thanks

[Mr Camouflage]

A Fairlady Z is the name all Z cars were sold as in Japan.

Fairlady Z in Japan = 240z everywhere else.

same for the 260z, 280z & zx, & 300zx.

Go down to your nearest Jap import car yard and you will notice all the 300zx's say Fairlady Z on the back.

Datsun Sports? Do you mean the 1600/2000 roadster convertable.

[HS30-H]

Hi Raven,

OK - I admit it. It was me all along. I made it up. It was my idea of an April fool joke ( but a bit late ). You got me.

Alan T.

( insert "irony" smilie here ).

PS - clue: You will not see OXO Cubes in Japan, as "oxo" means something very unappetising indeed.

[Mr Camouflage]

Say what now?

I dont get it?

Was there another thread i should have read first?

[Daniel]

The story goes something like the head of datsun's favorite play was"My fair lady" thus that name.They thought the U.S. would think the name sissy so they needed another name for here.The story goes the factory work order number for the car was 240Z.The rest is history.

[HS30-H]

Sorry Mr C, maybe I was being a bit too obscure.

But Raven really ought to have used the "search" function a bit more before firing off a question like that..................!

That "My Fair Lady" story actually initially applied to the "Roadster" SP / SR series cars, and ever since then Nissan / Datsun have called the series and its successors "Fairlady". The "Fairlady Z" was the next generation on from the SP / SR series - and technically we should call this iteration the "S30" series ( mainly because all the model variants were derived from this basic model designation ).

When you see the cars badged "240Z" you are really just looking at one type of S30-series Z ( and a local-market single type at that ). Don't forget that in Japan there was always a bigger choice of model variant to choose from. From October 1971 they got the addition of the L24-engined cars - called "Fairlady 240Z", which will confuse you even more. At that time they had a choice of 7 different versions to choose from, and none of them were called just "240Z" - they were all Fairladies.................

The more pendantic amongst us ( moi? ) might even try to persuade you that ALL S30-series Z cars are really Fairlady Zs, whether they are badged locally as "240Z" or not. I guess its just a question of where you are looking at it from.

For further information on this topic, might I suggest that anybody interested invests in a copy of Brian Long's excellent book "DATSUN Z - from Fairlady to 280Z" published by Veloce - ISBN 1-901295-02-8.

Anybody want to discuss where the musical "My Fair Lady" came from?

Regards,

Henry Higgins.

[Victor Laury]

The Story I heard was, It was Mr. K who was responsible for the sports cars not being sold as Fairladies in the states. He fought with the home office over the Bluebird emblems in the with the 59 models. Replacing them, fresh off the boat with "Datsun" emblems from another car. When the SP212 Fairladies came over, they were so few of them he didn't bother. In late 62, when the SP310 (1500) fairladies came over, he made sure that the emblems never made it to the dealer's floor, replacing them on the while the cars were still at the docks. By mid 63, He finally was able to convice Japan to ship without the "cutesey" names.

So now, Fairlady, Bluebird and Cherry are not names most Americans associate with with Sports cars, Small sedans and sub-compact cars. It's my opinion that it's our loss.

[Raven]

Thanks for the reply Victor, Daniel and Mr Camouflage, and yeah I was talking about the 1600/2000. But HS30-H your a bit of an asshole, it was a simple Question and im hear to learn, not to meet people like you, also, i did search the forums, nothing came up that gave me the answer i was looking for.

Thanks for the response

[HS30-H]

Yes Raven,thats me alright!

Regards,

Alan T.

( ps. Maybe Mike can make a "Smartarse" smilie for me, or a "tongue-in-cheek" / "irony" smilie so that people don't take a little joshing the wrong way? ).

[CoastGuardZ]

What in the...

Hey now there Raven. Take it easy there on ol' HS30-H. We all love him here. He our best source for the real unclouded information on the Z. He takes his Z's seriously. And he's not a fan of mis-information. So you can be assured he only wants you to learn the real deal our Japanese fathers would want you to learn, not just local folklore.

Hey Al, Hows things over on the old island? It's all good over here, other than Bush trying to start a War and all.

Nate

[Raven]

Sorry Alan, I thought you were haveing a go at me thats all.

Sorry again

Raven.

[HS30-H]

Nate, you're a true Gent. Always throwing me a lifeline when I'm just about to go under..................thanks mate.

Maybe I should apologise to Raven for being a bit too much of a smartarse ( sorry Raven ), but if you DO type "Fairlady Z" into the search engine thing on this site you can get at least three pages of relevant threads. Reading through them you would certainly glean enough info to realise that there IS indeed such a thing as a Fairlady Z.

I thought my second post was a bit less smartarse and a bit more informative ( no? ), but maybe my "style" or manner is a bit difficult to get your head round unless you are acclimatised ( anaesthetised? immunised? ) to it. Oh well, you can't please everyone. I would have thought that Raven might have spotted an

attempt at a constructive reply in my second post, but maybe it went over his head.............. Probably my fault. Sorry about that.

Nate, things are really not all that good over here at the moment. I live in central London, and the transport / traffic system is in total chaos. Big Brother is trying to "improve" the situation by narrowing the roads and making traffic signals stay red for longer. From February we have a new system of road tolls for central London ( intended to stop people from driving IN to central London ) and I live INSIDE the toll-controlled area. However, I will have to pay to travel OUT of the toll-controlled area. Go figure that one out. Added to this we have thousands of "speed bumps" and traffic-calming measures that are tearing the undersides off of many cars. My everyday driver ( not a Z ) is even suffering from this damage, so I will stand no chance if I try to drive one of my Z cars down these roads ( goodbye exhaust system ).

Compared to all that, the impending war seems quite unimportant ( at least until it all kicks off, that is ).

Thanks for the lifeline, Nate.

All the best,

Alan T.