HS30-H

Not that thing. That guy just leaves it in its garage with its arse up the air getting dusty...... Nice pic Mike! Notice the screw on the floor. I must go and pick that up........ :stupid: Cheers, Alan T.

Amen to that, Craig. Exactly. Kazuo Kimura probably had more direct influence on the looks of the A550X than Goertz, and he had also penned most of the styling of the Silvia before Goertz even started his contract at Nissan....... I spotted a Swiss-registered 2000GT at this year's Goodwood Revival meeting back in September. It was what I'd call semi race-prepped - with a fire extinguisher system, roll cage and lots of lock-wiring - although it wasn't participating in the race events themselves. It was parked up in the central Paddock area with some pretty cool company, so I presume it was the personal transport of one of the gentleman racers. Some runabout! Cheers, Alan T.

That's a 432, not a 432R. It's a lovely museum isn't it? Nissan need something similar, but it probably won't be a reality until 2010. Nice pics!

Hello Christopher, I'm always gratified to hear somebody else thinking the same way as me. I've owned many cars from many different manufacturers and nations, and I honestly think that - in many ways - these humble Japanese sports-GTs are the most 'exotic' things I have come across. It is the many elements of mystery that I find so appealing. Want to know anything at all about Porsche homologation specials? - go look it up. Its all out there in umpteen books. Lancia suspension patents? - no problem. ALFA prototypes? - likewise. S30-series Z? - err, what's that? To some extent, I'm a little embarrassed to have the spotlight on me and to be asked questions that would best be answered by a Japanese native. But here goes..... No, I would not call these "Inkan". Inkan are the more exotic form of Hanko that were traditionally carved by hand from Ivory. These industrial examples are better described as "Hanko" - which is in some cases used like a verb as well as a noun. The one on your headlight scoop simply says "Ken" - shorthand for "Ken-sa" ( "Tested" ). The one on Kats' steering wheel is more complex, and says "Ken-sa" - with the date in the middle - and then "Go-kaku" ( "Passed" ). They would undoubtedly have been stamped by the companies that made them; in the case of the headlamp scoop it would be a company called "Kotobuki", one of Japan's most renowned modern furniture manufacturers, and in the case of the steering wheel it would have been "Izumi" - who made steering wheels for several car manufacturers and also sold sports steering wheels under their own name. These were the people who helped to pioneer the special half wood, half composite, high pressure moulding process that Kats reported to us first hand from Matsuo san. Actually, my first work-placement while I was at engineering college was with a company that made specialised injection moulds for the arms industry. I have first-hand experience of the kind of 'fettling' that used to go on with injection mould tools before the days when CNC and more exotic techniques became commonplace. In fact, we used to send some mould tools to be specially finished with a simulated leather-grain effect, and the guy who did this worked in complete secrecy. He would not let us near his premises! It seems like a million years ago now. In those days ( we are only talking late Seventies here of course ) things seemed much more hands-on, and we had to do many many re-fits and mods until the mould worked properly and the end-product actually FITTED the way it was supposed to. I don't doubt the situation with these interior panels was roughly the same. Regarding the non-notched headliner moulding panel on your car - this is the same as that on the 'no-frills' S30-S model. There MUST have been more than one mould tool - unless the first few production panels were ALL moulded without the notches and they were cut by hand? In fact, with production in early 1970 hitting such dizzy heights, I bet they had perhaps two or three different mould tools operating for EACH component on these cars. If we look really closely, I bet we could identify the 'fingerprint' moulding differences that would help to identify each individual mould tool.............. That's probably taking it all too far though. Cheers, Alan T.

Hi Craig, Not telling! ( Just like Katakana, its pretty-much impossible to get it to sound right ). I did get one made up in Romaji, which I was assured would be legally acceptable. I agree with you about the stickers. I doubt that they could be bothered to waste time removing them. Much more likely to be '****-up' rather than 'conspiracy' I reckon. Cheers, Alan T.

Christopher, I don't want to lead you up the garden path into thinking this has any particular extra significance in the automotive field. If you look into Japanese "Hanko" or "Inkan" stamps, you will see that they have traditionally featured Kanji 'letters' enclosed by a circle or a square. Think of a Japanese ( or Chinese ) "Kakejiku" hanging banner - often featuring some "Shuji" calligraphy and a drawing or painting - which are often marked with the Hanko or Inkan of the artist. You can see it on porcelain or any other number of Japanese and Chinese objects. Japanese people - when 'signing' important, or legal, documents - are often called upon to do so with their personal "Hanko". It means much more than a handwritten signature in Japanese culture. The "Nan" sticker really only imitates this officiality in its style. I think its a fairly typical bit of Japanese bureaucracy from 30-something years ago. We shouldn't read TOO much into its styling I think..... As to why it was still present when the item in question was fettled or 'repaired' ( we mustn't forget that we are groping in the dark here ) - well, I think sometimes we tend to think that the Japanese have always been super-efficient and did everything by the book and to the letter. It can be shocking for some people that this was - and indeed still is - not necessarily so! Having lived in Japan, worked in a typical Japanese office environment, and visited many factories, workshops and warehouses, I can tell you that they can sometimes be a real mess! My point being that with Nissan trying to keep up with demand for the Z car, and Nissan's outside suppliers sometimes feeling the pinch more than Nissan themselves, we should not be too surprised that corners were slightly cut or that items initially graded substandard but saveable actually made it onto completed and "OK" stickered cars....... Anyway, we still don't know if the "Nan" stickers were applied by Nissan themselves ( possibly on receipt of the items from their supplier ) or the supplier / manufacturer. In the case of your car Christopher, I'd wonder whether this was a case where - being so early in production as to almost qualify as being "pre-production" - every effort was being made to get it right the first time. I can imagine that pressure on outside suppliers would be very high at the point where a new model was being released. What with instances of 'good' coloured panels not often having the "Nan" sticker, but with a fair few instances of what seem to be re-coloured panels having the sticker present, I'm leaning towards this being related to colour-quality control at the moulding stage. That's the way I'm thinking about it anyway. Cheers, Alan T.

Hi Halz, This question is an interesting one, and so far - despite asking many people who I thought would know - I've never really got a comprehensive and fully satisfactory answer. First of all, the stickers on the back of your plastic interior panels are indeed fairly common. I've seen them umpteen times, and they are usually still there unless they have fallen off due to age / damp / dessication or whatever. HOWEVER, I have also taken panels out of cars where the sticker was not present, and appears never to have been attached in the first place. When you know what the sticker says, it makes it even more of a mystery: It actually says "Nan". Now, Japanese kanji characters are not always directly-translateable into western language. Just like the Chinese characters that they derive from, they are 'ideograms'. That means that a native speaker / reader 'sees' them, and understands what they mean, in a quite different way to the way that we read the English on this page. I won't bore you with the ins and outs of this, but suffice to say that many times it means that proper translation only approximates the true significance. "Nan" signifies a problem or difficulty. This "Nan" kanji character is normally used in conjunction with at least one other kanji character in order to make a full 'word'. In the case of this sticker, the character is enclosed in a circle - which signifies that it is a stylistic representation of a Japanese 'Hanko' stamp. Anyone used to Japanese documentation will understand and be quite familiar with Hanko stamps. Since "Nan" has an essentially negative meaning, one would have to surmise that the panels receiving this sticker were sub-standard in some way. However, as we know, they were still used on some cars. In fact, they were used on a lot of cars! In this case, I wondered if they might have needed some extra work or fettling to put them right before they were used. I wonder if this is edging closer to the truth? I too have seen different colours on the reverse side of some interior plastic panels. In every case that *I* have seen this, the visible colour on the car was black. I wondered if panels that were moulded in certain colours were more difficult to make consistently, and some of the coloured panels that were not good enough to use were then set aside to be sprayed black, and joined the originally-black mouldings on the biggest pile? The panels look to have been injection moulded to me. I wondered if they might have had a run of 'rejects' between plastic colour changes ( they would usually have kept an injection mould hot and running when changing plastic colours ) that needed to be resprayed. Anyone familiar with plastic mouldings will understand this kind of situation. Anyway, that's all I have on the subject. I don't even know what company manufactured these for Nissan - otherwise we could ask them! Cheers, Alan T.