Fairlady Z stroker

[Gav240z]

Alan Alan Alan Alan I must be annoying

[HS30-H]

Good job I've got a big nose, otherwise I wouldn't have heard you.

I don't like this car much. It is indeed a bit of a mongrel from what I can see. The engine is probably very nice and I'm sure it works quite well - but linking it to a four-speed sounds a bit of a short cut. This gives a clue to the original identity of the base car; I should think that its a base-model Fairlady Z ( S30-S ) and that might also explain one "luxury" spec. bumper and one 'cooking' model version. It would be the one without rubber trim that is the original. Notice he says he's only got three matching wheels. He would have brought the car in from Japan ( I suspect that the vendor might be Japanese or Japanese-related ) and therefore would not have needed to have a Japanese "shakken" ( compliance and safety inspection ) - which would have made it much cheaper to buy. I have seen cars of this calibre selling in Japan for around 1,000,000 JPY - and this is when they are advertised at around 1,200,000 or so. Naturally, importing to Southern California will have cost some money - but not as much as he's asking for. Personally, I think his 510 coupe is a bit doggy but more of a bargain than the Z.

Japanese Home-market spec. cars can indeed be hard to pin down. Its very difficult to give cut-off dates and spec. changes for some of these parts, and you certainly can't say "they did this, and then they did this" with any assurance. However, the 'later" style dash did cross over with the early type rear light treatment for a few weeks of production, and the switch to twin hatch struts was also fairly early in Japan. When the "Fairlady 260Z" model debuted in Japan, it was very quickly withdrawn and a stop-gap model ( cobbled up from earlier specs mixed with some of the new ones ) was put back on the market. The problems were linked to the engine, and particularly the way that the anti-pollution devices were strangling its performance and causing breakdowns in Japan's hot summer weather.

Japan seems to be full of cars like this one. The really good cars are a real cut above and consequently sell for more money - but there's lots out there like this one, and the owners tend to be quite young. I guess there's no harm in him baiting his rod and seeing if he gets a bite. Ebay is full of overpriced items, and they - puzzlingly sometimes - seem to get sold.

Gav - don't get confused about hatch and pillar vents. The early cars that you have seen with what appear to be "Z" emblem pillar vents AND hatch vents are almost certainly PS30 432's. Right from 1969 they had a "Z" pillar emblem that looked like a vent - but if you take it off there is no vent hole underneath. It just LOOKS like the later vent emblem. You can see this on my photo of Morimoto san's 432 that you posted above.

All the best,

Alan T.