New Historical Z car Timeline

[S30Driver]

A pretty good new timeline of the Z car.   Some interesting footage & pictures. 

[HS30-H]

3 hours ago, S30Driver said:

A pretty good new timeline of the Z car.   Some interesting footage & pictures. 

But packed full of mistakes, misconceptions and misapprehensions. As usual.

 

[HS30-H]

Why do these same rotten ingredients keep getting served up in 'new' dishes time and time again?

The video would have it that Katsuji Kawamata somehow came up with the 'Fairlady' name first, and *then* decided it would be a good idea to create a line of cars to use it on. Nonsense. The 'Fair Lady' name was simply pinned on something that was already well underway.

Next the presenter tells us that the 'SP311' was "...an all new design by Count Albrecht Goertz".  Huh? Goertz had NOTHING to do with the SP/SR range. Nothing. Is this guy getting mixed up with the minimal input that Goertz had on the rear pillar shape of the CSP311 Silvia (which had already been styled by Kazuo Kimura before Goertz got anywhere near it)? I reckon so.

The Yamaha YX-30 as the Nissan 2000GT/Yamaha project? Nope. The guy has got the wrong project there. And that Yamaha YX-30 project had input from Goertz? Nope. The YX-30 the genesis of the Toyota 2000GT? Nope. Toyota may well have seen it, but they didn't base anything on it let alone the MF10 2000GT. This whole section is garbage.

Then the Katayama lore starts. Of course it had to. Apparently Katayama was "the President of Nissan" at the time (another clue to the lens through which Japanese industrial history is being viewed through here) and - amazingly, seeing as he was simultaneously both an 'outcast' and some kind of refugee saint with product line-up input - the video wants to tell us that Katayama alone had dreamed up the idea that Nissan needed a sporty GT coupe in its line-up. Of course, nobody else back in Japan had even imagined such a thing, let alone taken any notice of the fact that worldwide trends in safety legislation and litigation were pushing against the long tradition of open sports cars. Nope. Garbage again. Painting Katayama as some kind of sole visionary is just short-sighted and misleading.

Apparently in 1971 the 'JDM' Fairlady Z got its '240Z' emblems replaced by 'Z' emblems. Nope. He's got that backwards. The original '69 up, non-vented, quarter emblems on the Japanese market variants were 'Z' roundels. In the switch to vented quarters, ALL variants got vented 'Z' roundels. Does the presenter think the early Japanese L20A-engined variants got '240Z' quarter emblems?

Roll on a little and we have the usual mix-up of facts surrounding the planning of the S30-series range, with the S20-engined models not mentioned at all in the narration. However, pretty panning shot of a 920 432 there, unless I was by this time hallucinating...

I got as far as the presenter talking about the Fairlady 240ZG (he calls it the "Fairlady ZG") as though it was the only Japanese market model with an L24, when in fact in September 1971 Nissan offered three distinct L24-engined S30 variants alongside the already available L20A and S20-engined Z variants. My will to live was fading, but I stuck it out.  Who knows, things might improve.

So when *is* he going to mention those S20-engined variants? He must have forgotten that the S20 was part of the plan pretty much from the get-go. That'll be it. Katayama apparently not keen though.

Oh! HERE is the 432-R (no 432?). Afterthought? Presenter mentions the S20 engine as also being fitted to the KPGC10 Skyline GT-R when that model debuted a good year after the Z. In fact the production S20 engine was designed and engineered to allow fitment in the S30-series Z body (capability for both front and rear sump versions) but debuted in the PGC10 model Skyline of February 1969. I guess we should be grateful for small mercies?

Nope. I'm not swallowing any more of this. I need a couple of Alka Seltzer. 

 

[HS30-H]

Maybe somebody with more patience and stamina than me, and who presumably - unlike me - got through the whole video, could tell me the answer to the (rhetorical?) question posed by the title of this production?

What DID Nissan do that Toyota couldn't?

[DatsunZGuy]

@HS30-H Thank you for setting the record straight and pointing out the inaccuracies of the video. 

I take anything posted on YouTube with a grain of salt when it comes to historical accuracy.  It is often more about generating Likes 👍  and ad revenue 💰 than integrity of the subject matter presented.