Hello all,

Can I ask for opinions on the following?

Are you happy with the positioning of the Emergency Brake on your early Z car?

In the UK, we have traditionally called this the "Handbrake" ( is that true for Australia / New Zealand too? ) and I know in Japan it has mainly been known as the "Side Brake".

Some owners will realise that the positioning of the Emergency Brake on the right side of the trans tunnel ( from the viewpoint of the driver sitting in the car ) was the same for both Right Hand Drive and Left Hand Drive versions. As far as I am aware, the only time that the positioning was changed to the OTHER side of the tunnel was in Factory-built "Works" competition cars ( specifically, in SOME of the Works rally cars that were Left Hand Drive - but not all of them ). I think this was only performed on a handful of cars after the Works drivers complained.

As the owner of more than one RHD early Z car, I have always felt that the position of the handle on the right hand side of the tunnel was perfect. When I drove an LHD early Z car for the first time, I was shocked to find how awkwardly positioned the Emergency Brake seemed.

I have in the past owned a fair few non-Z LHD cars ( American, French, Italian, German ) and I think I remember that the handbrakes were usually centrally-mounted or were otherwise easy to get to and use effectively and sportingly ( especially for the odd handbrake-assisted turn ). The early Z cars seem to be unusual in the way that they kept the same position on both LHD and RHD cars.

What do you think?

Alan T.

Er,

This is a bit of a long thread to revive, but I thought that there was so much information / debate in it that it could not be ignored.

I have some more grist for the mill.

Last Sunday ( 2nd Nov. ) I attended a meeting in Japan organised jointly by "CLUB S30" - of which I am a member - and the "S30 OWNERS CLUB". An honourable guest at the show was Mr Yoshihiko Matsuo, the chief designer and leader of the team that designed the S30-series Z car.

It was great to see him again, and he was in good spirits with a lot to say. Along with some others ( notably Dr Suzuki of Club S30 - who is great at getting to the point! ), I took the opportunity to ask him some questions. One of the questions was with regard to the positioning of the Hand Brake / E Brake on the S30-series Z car. His answer was quite unequivocal;

Matsuo san stated that the position in the RHD car is what he would consider 'correct' ( closest to the driver ), and that cost considerations prevented them from engineering the relocation of the handle and mechanism for the LHD cars. As far as he is concerned, the whole car was designed primarily with RHD in mind - but with details that would accommodate an LHD version for the markets that required it, and suiting some of the ergononomics that those markets also required. The car was designed with RHD layout bias.

Matsuo san also made two points to back this up; The first point was that a great deal of Nissan's design process and engineering systems had been inherited from their days making Austin cars. As Japan had taken up the habit of driving on the left of the road ( with the driver sitting on the right of the car ) there was naturally a great legacy to doing this. Most of the systems on the cars that they started to make were ( naturally ) oriented to RHD layout. Most of the parts that they licensed from other manufacturers ( brake and clutch hydraulics, as well as carburation come to mind ) were sized in the Imperial ( Inch based ) systems that they had been using on the British-designed Austin cars. Carburettors and exhausts were usually situated on the left of the engine, conveniently avoiding the Brake, Clutch, Accelerator and steering systems in the engine bay. The S30-series Z was no different in this respect to most of the other models they were making at the time. It was designed and engineered using many components that were primarily intended for RHD applications. Matsuo san said that he and his team designed the car mainly

with RHD in mind, but added some features that would allow an LHD version to be produced at the same time. This was after all a natural bias considering the history of the company that they worked for, and the home market that they sold to.

Second point ( and one that history seems to have forgotten / ignored ) is that Matsuo and his team did NOT think that the LHD version would sell anything like as well as it did. Matsuo san actually said that even up until the launch of the car in late 1969 they were convinced that they would be lucky to sell as many as 2000 cars in the USA market. Of course Mr Katayama was trying to convince them that they could potentially sell a lot more ( and he was of course proved right ) but the point is that Matsuo and his team were not taking the LHD market as seriously as some might have us believe. Sure they did a great job, but the LHD cars were not the focus that the subsequent sales figures would point to.

I'm conscious that I'm probably not reporting / explaining this as well as I could be ( I tend to be a bit too wordy anyway, and I'm a bit tired and not very focussed after getting back from Japan ) but I DO think it was worth reporting what he said. It would be nice to see a proper interview on the subject with Matsuo san in English ( I've never seen one other than in Japanese - have you? ) and his views are ( I would say ) more interesting and enlightening than just about anybody else that I can think of with regard to the cars that we love.

I'm looking forward to seeing him again. Its a great education and he is very inspiring.

Alan T.

Words from the Chief Designer's mouth should lay the controversy to rest! Good Stuff Alan (as always!) Thanks.

And with that, 13 pages of heated discussion are quenched... for now.

Originally posted by Alfadog

And with that, 13 pages of heated discussion are quenched... for now.

Not wanting to kill a discussion, but I HOPE that no one would dare to disagree with THE MAN who (above all others) really knows what went into the creation of the S30 series.

(ducking for cover now, bye)

The ignorance of some people may surprise you...

Originally posted by Alfadog

The ignorance of some people may surprise you...

Trust me on this one Lachlan; the ignorance of the general public will NEVER surprise this old dog! Woof Woof.

So, how did you like my Aussie slang in the X mas gift thread? I'm practicing for when Rick comes back from vacation!

I noticed that actually

Very well done, almost got the spelling right too :cheeky:

Originally posted by Alfadog

I noticed that actually

Very well done, almost got the spelling right too :cheeky:

Hmm, I was copying and pasting from the web page you provided so any errors there would have been carried over.

Hmm I had another look at the site, apparently you can spell it bonza or "bonzer".. I stand corrected

If this is the real deal (and I for one believe that it is), then who was the individual in NDA who decided that they would get their revenge on Matsuo san & the rest of the RHD world?

Great to see that you asked the question when you had the chance Alan!

Absolutly fantastic.

No one could ever dispute the facts as they have been presented, staright form the head of the design team.

Pity though, as we don't have any argument anymore and the thread was slipping into obscurity!

How's the definitive book progressing Alan?

It was actually fascinating to listen to him talking about so many details of the cars whilst having cars in front of him that he could point things out on.

He spent a lot of time looking at Kats' car - using it to make points and take questions from the assembled group around him. He moved on to a few other cars, and talked about the ZG - which was very interesting to me. More on this anon.

One of the things that comes up time and time again in Matsuo san's discussion of the car is the COST CUTTING element. At almost every turn he and his team were under the cosh from the bean-counters who were trying to keep the price of making the car to the absolute minimum. In fact, they were working to target pricings that they thought would allow the company to sell the cars at a very competitive price, but still make a profit for the company and its dealers. Matsuo and his team had to change MANY details of their designs in order to fit in with the strategy of the sales team and the accountants.

We all know what happened. They sold shiploads of the things, and the company made a LOT of money from it. Its interesting to think that it might have been a 'better' car - or at least a car with more 'pure' essence of what the designer and his team intended - had the cost-cutting element not been so strictly applied. If that had been the case, it almost certainly would have turned out that the car would have been a sales flop in the export market, and that I would not be sitting here writing eulogies to it. In fact, this site might not have existed!

That COST CUTTING was certainly one of the things - if not THE main thing - that dictated many of those 'dual-use' parts and compromises. Isn't this known as 'Design Concession'? You can see that they 'handed' many things that COULD be easily switched and dual-engineered to fit the RHD and LHD markets ( the column-mounted controls are a good case in point, and hell - Mr Matsuo should have got an automotive Oscar for the combination rotary lamp switch / wiper control stalk! ) and also that they engineered some details on the shell that would facilitate dual RHD / LHD use ( like the undercowl panel with dual positions for wipers ). But some details were too big / expensive to engineer for dual use, and the Handbrake / E-Brake is one of these. Matsuo san would have liked to position the lever on the DRIVERS side of the tunnel for both LHD and RHD cars, but was forced to leave it on one side by the cost-cutters. Therefore, the RHD position is what he would call 'correct' according to his original intentions.

Its clear from what Matsuo san says that he and his team, along with many others inside Nissan Japan, did NOT believe that they would sell even a small percentage of what the S30-series Z eventually sold. This is true for the Japanese home market as well as the Export market. He said that they just could not take it on board that a SPORTS car would sell anything more that a few thousand in any market. They had this in mind when the car was in its genesis, and it must have influenced them a great deal.

Above all, it seems clear to me that Matsuo and his team could NOT at that time have designed and engineered a vehicle that was aimed PURELY at one specific ( LHD ) export market, without it being at least partially a compromise over a true 'clean sheet of paper' design. They were FORCED to use a layout, a system and some components that had bloodlines stretching back to their Austin days and beyond. In fact, I think they made a damn good job of it - we ALL agree on that don't we?

Many people might think that I've trying to diminish the LHD cars in some way, or call into question their 'purity' or whatnot. This is not really the case. I have my own thoughts about the LHD cars, and they should certainly NOT trouble the vast majority of you all out there that actually own and drive LHD S30-series Z cars. What is more important to me is that the RHD cars get the recognition that they truly deserve. I have noticed that the vast majority of press and other coverage of the early Z cars puts so much emphasis on the LHD cars that the RHD models seem to be sidelined as some kind of afterthought. They have even been described as a manifestation of Nissan's 'vanity' (!). For many years I have felt like I wanted to rescue the reputation of the RHD cars. Anyone who points to sales figures and thinks that they had any bearing on what Matsuo and his team were thinking and doing during the genesis of the car is making a big mistake. You only have to listen to Matsuo's statement - of their belief that they were only making something that would sell a couple of thousand -

to understand that the final sales figures mean nothing much in relation to their intent.

My everyday car is an Alfa Romeo 156 ( 2.5 litre V6 - Sport Pack 3 ) and I first got enthusiastic about this model when I rented one in Italy a few years ago. Of course, because I rented it in Italy is was an LHD model, and I enjoyed driving it around the Tuscan hills as well as the crazy Rome and Florence traffic. Its interior layout was quite different to the classic Italian-Ape driving position of yore ( long arms and short legs needed! ). It was certainly better than my 155 - with a nice seat position that would go down as low as I like. I resolved to buy a used one back in the UK. Imagine my dismay when I found that the RHD version had a MUCH worse driving position and interior layout than the LHD version. I had to face up to the fact that the RHD ( UK market ) version was suffering from Design Concession. The layout of its major components was dictating compromise on the 'niche' market RHD version. I decided I could live with it ( its still a good car in my opinion ) and bought one. I'm still enjoying it - but I KNOW the LHD version works better, and is probably more true to the original design. So, this business of Design Concession and LHD / RHD is still going on.............

I'm sure that most of this will make absolutely no difference to the history of the Z car now. Its too late. Just this last couple of months there has been another article about the "240Z" ( as though that's the name of the WHOLE range ) in one of the UK classic car mags. Once again they come out with all the old cliches, and once again they say that the car was 'designed' by Albrecht Goertz. We really need to go back, wipe the tape, and start again. I'm not holding my breath, though.

I'm also not holding my tongue, OR refraining from trying to make the points that I think need to be made. I'm sure that many people will want to shoot me down over all this - but in essence I'm just a messenger boy. No point in shooting the messenger if you don't like the message he delivered.

Once again, sorry for the long and windy post. Since I got back from Japan this time I've been feeling quite frustrated that Matsuo san's voice is so little heard outside Japan, and that he is forced to pull so many punches.

Regards to all,

Alan T.