Hi all,

Some of you may know that I was in Japan last week, and attended a couple of events while I was there.

The most exciting of these ( for my part ) was being allowed to see Nissan's large store of more than 400 old cars at their now-closed production facility in Zama, near Yokohama.

Its always been frustrating to know that almost all the other Japanese car manufacturers have their own museums in Japan, but that Nissan were lagging behind and had no concrete plans to put a proper museum together, despite using references to the company history and 'DNA' of their product whilst advertising and selling new cars. This was especially frustrating in the knowledge that Nissan have for many years held a vast store of old pre-production, show, concept, landmark models and old race cars.

I have been trying to get to see these cars ( and one or two of them in particular ) for roughly the last 14 years - even while I lived in Japan in fact - but Nissan does not open the doors of this store to the general public and it is pretty much an 'invitation only' situation.

As part Nissan's "70-year anniversary celebrations", May 2003 has been marked by some special events in Japan. Some of Nissan's collection of old race cars were put on display at the company HQ in Ginza, Tokyo. These looked fantastic, and drew large crowds of office workers from nearby buildings at lunchtime ( making it hard to get a clear photo opportunity! ). There was also a small display to mark the retirement of Factory race driver Kazuyoshi Hoshino, and a series of films in a temporary theatre setup.

Throughout May, Nissan have also been inviting selected Nissan-related car clubs to view the contents of the storage warehouse at Zama. My chance to see the contents finally came when CLUB S30 were invited to visit on the morning of Sunday 18th May, and as a member I was finally allowed access to this holy shrine of Nissan history.

There had to be a catch, and sure enough here it was. Basically, only two hours max for the visit and no electrics in the building ( natural light only - as the electric is currently disconnected to the warehouse while redevelopment takes place! ). This made taking photos very difficult indeed, as only gaps in the clouds made enough light flood through the skylights - and the gaps were few and far between. This was going to be a big test for my little Nikon digital, its small flash and its limited battery power.

To be honest, I could have spent the whole two hours on just ONE car ( guess which one that was? ) but the place was chock FULL of interesting stuff and I tried to take in as much as possible. There's no knowing when I'll be allowed back.................

The good news is that I finally heard official confirmation of a rumour that had been circulating amongst interested parties; Nissan are currently putting plans together for a PROPER heritage museum - so we will be able to have a place to make a pilgrimage to after all. More news on this as and when it comes...........

For those that share an interest in this kind of thing, please take a look at a few pics that I've posted in the Members Gallery section. There are a mixture of pics from the Ginza, Tokyo HQ exhibition and the inside of the storage warehouse at Zama.

Link to my gallery:

http://www.classiczcars.com/photopost/showgallery.php?cat=500&ppuser=2116&thumb=1

If anyone has any specific questions, I'd be pleased to answer them if I can ( just post questions on this thread ).

Hope that you enjoy them.

All the best,

Alan T.

Hi Halz,

Do you mean the yellow car that's in the wide-angle shot of the warehouse interior? This is the photo on the front page of the site. If you mean that one then its a Nissan R92CP ( a Group C car from the early 1990's ). The yellow one was sponsored by "From A" which was a recruitment / employment magazine, and the graphics on the car were quite distinctive as they were reversed-out from one side of the car to the other. Tamiya made quite a lot of 1/24 scale kits of these cars in all their different guises and sponsor paintjobs.

The GRX you mention was actually an engine rather than a car type. It was a hemi-chambered double DOHC V12 that was fitted to the R381-II, R382 and R383 sports racers back in the late Sixties. The yellow car pictured in a single-car shot in the warehouse ( with a plastic sheet over it ) is one of the R382's, and there are also some shots of another R382 and the prototype R383 amongst the pics that I took at Nissan's Ginza showroom, and are also somewhere in my Gallery images.

The R380 / R381 / R382 / R383 series of sports racing cars actually started off as a Prince project, with the Prince R380. In the mid Sixties Prince bought a Brabham BT-8 open-topped sports racing car and had a good look at the chassis design. They cribbed quite a lot of details for their closed-top R380 sports racing car but they installed their own engine; the Prince GR8 unit ( a 6 cylinder 4-valve DOHC ) which was later to be the base of the S20 engine of the GT-R and 432.

There were several different guises for the R380, and indeed an R380-II series was built. These cars were very successful in Japanese sports racing.

When Nissan merged with Prince, the series was rebadged Nissan - and a further development was made in the R381. Nissan / Prince had been working on a V12 engine for this car, but it was not ready in time. Nissan bought in some American V8 race engines as a stop-gap ( they actually bought them from Dean Moon ) and went racing - quite successfully. The R381 featured a lot of development on aerodynamics, and in a cockpit-adjustable rear wing in particular. This went through several guises, being utilised as an air-brake as well as feathering on the straights and tilting on a hydraulic mechanism for corners - all quite experimental and not altogether well understood. A coupe version of the R381 was built too - and about this time Nissan started taking the cars abroad for a few selected races ( Australia being one of the places they visited - where the car was rebadged as a "Datsun" ).

Once the GRX engine was finally ready it was installed in the R381-II, with some success.

For the following season the hydraulic rear wing was dropped and a new series was built; the R382. This did very well indeed.

Finally, the R383 was developed - but never got to race in anger.

This series of successful sports-racing cars is not very well known outside of Japan.

I'll add some photos below to illustrate.

Alan T.

here's the R381;

R381 again;

The GRX engine;

The R381-II with the GRX engine;

slightly out of sequence, the R381 coupe - which I think looks quite brutal and Chapparal-like ( I like it );

R382;

and the end of the line - the R383;

Thank you for the great pictures, Alan.

Thanks Rolf,

I'm always happy to share the info with people who are interested. The 1960's and 1970's were a very interesting time in Japanese motorsport, but we don't hear much about it.

All the best,

Alan T.

Alan, your knowledge continues to blow me away! Thank you so much for sharing everything with us!!!

I would love to see a R380 in my collection! I wouldn't even mind having one of the volkswagon kit cars of that thing!

St.S,

How about this; a GRX V12 engined Z?

That would make things go all quiet over at HybridZ.org, wouldn't it?

Might be a bit tall, though..............

Cheers!

Alan T.