HS30-H

Just thinking out loud here......... Title of this thread is "A 1970 Z car approaches $30 grand!", and I'm smiling as I sip my coffee. Of course, in world market terms the vast majority of North American market S30-series Z cars are still just about the lowest-valued monetarily anywhere. That's not a judgement of anything other than their average sale prices, and the value of the $US in world currency markets. Ten years ago, my Fairlady 240ZG already had an 'Agreed Value' insurance figure equivalent to $30,000 on it. In the last ten years it certainly hasn't got any lower. In Japan these days the better 240ZG models are starting to change hands for figures upward of $50,000........... the kind of money that will get you a Fairlady Z432 rebuild project, or the deposit for a loan on a 432-R. I don't like talking ( or even thinking ) about old cars as "investments" - but if any of us has the ambition to own a good early Z either now or in the near future, I suggest making hay whilst the sun shines.

77 Sunset Strip, surely? Or 'Fairlady Z - Export Model'........ Thing is, it's not actually wrong to call any '240Z' a Nissan. All of those USA-market cars were Nissans.......... weren't they? Whereas not all S30-series Z cars were 'Datsuns'....

One thing to remember when talking about Japanese aftermarket exhaust manifolds for the 'L-gata' sixes is that they were made for many more models than just the S30 and S130-series Z cars. When buying used manifolds on their own, you could very easily be buying something designed to fit a Skyline, for example..........

Oh yes, I quite understand that. It is quite natural. I just wish for a little less cult-of-personality and a little more comprehension that one man is not the beginning and the end of the story..... Quite so. Well put. There are of course quite a few figures - very important in the story of 'our' cars - whom have never had the chance to put forward their sides of the story in the English language, and therefore have not even been given the opportunity to bask in a little limelight. Some figures cast such an unfeasibly large shadow that others are damned to reside in the darkness....... When I see Yutaka Katayama saying - on film! - "..I designed it..." it makes me very, very sad. I quite understand your viewpoint. But you cannot deny that there was a whole generation of people who grew up believing - mistakenly - that the company that was the designer and manufacturer of these cars was called 'DATSUN', when it was actually called Nissan. That, is what I am talking about. Still see it all the time - even on here. "Datsun did" such and such, "Datsun made" this and that, "Datsun designed" what not. People seem to regard Nissan and Datsun as two completely different entities, with one being cruel enough to try and extinguish all traces of the other. That's why I don't find it so easy to get my head around a project that might use the 'Datsun' moniker and 'Heritage' in its name, but not 'Nissan'........ Alan T.

Yes, thanks zztom. Very interesting to read this kind of article. Are you kidding? That story is never going to go away now! It might as well be etched into a tablet made of industrial diamond and mounted on the side of Mount Rushmore. Well, that's one of the first English-language instances where I have seen the Nissan ( = military truck ) Datsun ( = civilian passenger car ) distinction mindset pointed out, and hats off to that. I wish we could hear more of that period - but notice how the article fast-forwards straight to Katayama and conveniently misses out a few decades? Poor Kawazoe doesn't even get a namecheck. I'm afraid that the story of Katayama 'reviving' the Goertz thing is a story being told from a particular viewpoint, and it is hard to be polite about it. Whatever Katayama's ideas and dreams were, Matsuo and his team were already working on a general brief to design a sports car. Katayama comes into that story somewhat later than he'd have you think - which is just his personal perspective backed up by sycophantic journalism. Do people honestly believe that Nissan was not going to produce a successor to the SP/SR Fairladies, or to make and sell the kind of personal 'GT' type of car that was being drawn up by so many rival manufacturers during that period? Do people honestly believe that Nissan was sitting like a dormant pot plant waiting for Katayama to pour water on them? It seems to me that they do.

First time I've seen that, and I was pleased to see them clearly make the point that this was ".....in America." Couple of annoying bits though; Do people still believe that Yutaka Katayama went down to the port with a bucketful of '240Z' badges ( where did they suddenly appear from? ) and a screwdriver, and started prising 'Fairlady' badges off of newly imported cars? Pfffft!......... And what was Johnnie Gable's Pinin Farina anecdote all about? Is she saying that Katayama and Pinin Farina 'designed' the S30-series Z in Katayama's office after a bit of wistful admiration of Jaguar's E-Type? She was sitting in front of Katayama's old G-Nose fronted HLS30-U, and pointed to the front of it as part of her anecdote. So was she saying that Katayama and Pinin Farina came up with the styling of the 'G-Nose' and the whole S30-series Z, or just the 'G-Nose' part of it? Wrong ( should I be polite and say 'mistaken'? ) on both counts, I'd say. Everybody want's a piece of it, don't they?

Sorry, but how have I "answered my own question"? The cars we are concerned with here on this forum are clearly marked as being products of Nissan. You just have to open the bonnet ( hood ) or the passenger door ( on those North American market models..... ) to see the evidence of it. They were quite clearly not sold as the 'product of Datsun'........ I don't fully understand the comments that they were "....sold by DATSUN..." or that they will "....always be Datsuns...". It is quite clear for anybody to see that they were sold by Nissan, and that they will always be Nissans. How about you call them all 'Fairladies', or products of 'Jitsuyo Jidosha Seizo KK', or 'Kaishin-sha'? It really would not be any more inaccurate than saying that they "....will always be Datsuns...."...... Trying to expunge the 'Nissan' name from the period in question seems to me to be some kind of retrospective knee-jerk reaction, based on a simplistic 'Nissan bad, Datsun good' kind of mindset. The ripples caused by slapping that 'Datsun' emblem on the export cars still have not reached the edge of the pond, have they? Alan T.

With respect, it had nothing to do with the United States or North America specifically. Nissan decided on this policy for WORLDWIDE export sales, and even some sectors of its domestic market. It was not exclusively a 'USA thing'.............

Well, there you are! Of course I didn't know Fred Jordan's wife was called Betty! Strike one! Learn something new every day. Face properly red at this point.

Will, We had 'The Flintstones' over here on UK terrestrial TV in period of course, so I know about Fred, Barney, Wilma and Betty ( although I preferred Deputy Dawg and Top Cat ), but I don't get their relevance to the subject in hand. If I really should know, then consider me red faced already

Well, if this 'Datsun Heritage Museum' is going to be biased towards maintaining "....popular folklore of the USA...." rather than attempting to educate and inform, then I think it is going to be somewhat less than fit for purpose - in my opinion......... I'm not even sure that I fully understand the questions, let alone the answers to them....... :knockedou For example, questions #1 and #12 appear to be pretty much the same question (?). Question #3's reference to "carbureators" (sic) is pretty obscure ( I like to think I know a fair bit about Matsuo san, but I have no idea what the question is referring to ) - so I kind of half wonder whether Matsuo himself would even know what it was all about. Question #8 asks about a "new" Datsun at Beaulieu, but I can assure you that it is distinctly second-hand looking, even after its ( bad ) 'resto' many years ago. Question #14 may seem somewhat cliquey to outsiders like myself..... I like quizzes and cryptic crosswords, but you've got me stumped on most of these. You might want to watch out for inaccurate 'lore' here. In Japan it is perfectly common to strike an oblique line through the letter Z and the number 7, and it is just to help differentiate them from similar shapes ( like the number '2' and the number '1'. ) - just as 280~Master has pointed out. When I first saw this in Japan whilst working there, I asked about it and was told that it originated in German use. The Japanese medical and scientific world was greatly influenced by Germany in the late 19th century ( especially the medical world ) and such things eventually became common use. It makes sense to me. I certainly don't believe that there is any substance to claims that the 'Ƶ' seen on our cars has any special extra significance, and I don't believe that there was anyone working at Nissan who was receiving encouragement from only Yutaka Katayama during the period that the S30-series Z was being designed. Any such story needs to be taken with a huge pinch of salt, and perhaps a little sympathy for the 30-something years in the relative wilderness that the storyteller subsequently found himself in. Alan T.

I'm not knocking the good intention; Any Datsun/Nissan 'museum' - or any attempt to preserve/promote a little of the history of the company is all good as far as I'm concerned...... I honestly think a lot of this story is overplayed and/or misunderstood. I question whether Nissan actually "...wanted to be known as Datsun.". It seems to me that they labelled their export product - and some of their domestic product - as 'Datsun' without any concerted effort to hide the fact that it was Nissan product. And yet, to this day, we still have people talking about 'Datsun' as though it was the company behind the product rather than a badge that had been - arguably somewhat arbitrarily - slapped onto that product. We also get 'Nissan' portrayed historically as some kind of black-hatted bad guys, and 'Datsun' as white-hatted good guys. I'm fairly nonplussed by it all. Is this entity actually going to be called 'The Datsun Heritage Museum' then? Wow..... No offence to anyone involved, but if this is true I find it a really obtuse choice. I'm going to need to have it explained to me how Nissan's history and heritage can be covered properly and correctly under the 'Datsun' banner. Alan T. ( real name Sheila Canth, by the way )

Yes, I am........ :cross-eye Is this the strangest poll yet? As far as I am aware, 'Datsun' ( as an entity, as a company ) never 'came' to the USA. The way that 'Datsun' is being referred to and discussed here makes it sound as though 'Datsun' was the company behind the cars. It wasn't. I quite understand the affection in which the 'Datsun' name is held, but it seems to me that the affection is at least partly rooted in historic misapprehension....... I think the truth is that 'Nissan' 'came' to the USA, and the 'Datsun' name - by that time - consisted of little more than an emblem that was attached to Nissan's products. Alan T.

Ah yes, here: http://www.classiczcars.com/forums/showthread.php?t=27319

The kanji reads "Kyoku To", and it translates as 'Far East' Its an 'F.E.T.' manifold, made and sold by 'Far East Trading' - quite a famous name in the Japanese tuning and aftermarket parts industry from the late Sixties onwards. I'm fairly sure that we have answered the same question here before in the past..........

Mike, I'm glad if they help, or if they are at least of interest. Thank you for making the distinction, and remembering the 'other' market models. I think we all learn something from looking at the big picture. The T-shaped slots are for the extra front seat-mount brackets seen on the Japanese market cars. These allowed an extra range of seat positioning - presumably for particularly short drivers. I've never actually seen a car with the seat sliders bolted in to the front mount position, and cars came from the factory with them mounted in the rear as a default position I believe. Funnily enough, I did compare the left and right side shapes to see if one was a mirror-image of the other. In fact they are not. The cutout details are obviously different, but so is the outline shape. I don't know how many people are aware that the transmission tunnel is not actually located in the centre of the floorpan if you use the sill pressings as the outer reference points........ I think these Japanese market rubber floor mats reflect that difference. Their profiles are not the same when one is reversed onto the other. Here are a couple of pics that might help to illustrate what those extra Japanese market front seat rail mounts look like. They are all I have handy at the moment - so they will have to do for now:

Took the two front mats out of the car to photograph them. Apologies for the light quality, but it was raining and I didn't want to get them wet by laying them on the ground outside - so I put them on top of the car. Flash will make them look a bit shinier than they really are, I think:

Mmmmm, that'd be nice. Except the transporter would be worth about 500 times more than what I had to put on it........ :laugh: I need Nissan to step up to the plate and loan me a new tow vehicle. Or maybe they might have one of these left hanging around in a dusty corner:

Talking of 4x4s........... Here's a way of bringing us back on topic somewhat: My tow car. It's a QUATTRO :classic:

The short answer to that is no. The original Japanese home market S30-series Z rubber mats had no logo on them at all as far as I am aware.......... I don't have any photos of mine handy at the moment, so I will have to take them out of the project car and take some shots of them - but they look just like the ones in the photo that 'z137' posted ( apart from the logo of course ) and of course they are for RHD configuration. As has been mentioned, the 'base level' model S30-S 'Fairlady Z' model and the ultra lightweight PS30-SB 'Fairlady Z432-R' model were fitted with the rubber mats as standard equipment. The other launch home market models ( S30 'Fairlady Z-L' and PS30 'Fairlady Z432' ) had full carpet as standard equipment. The same standard specs / trim levels were carried over into the launch of the L24-engined models for the Japanese market in late 1971. However, the Japanese market ordering options allowed the prospective owners of new 'ZS' / 'Standard' models to specify full carpet as an extra cost option, should they so wish. Theoretically, the reverse would also apply - where somebody ordering a 'ZDX' / 'Deluxe' model could specify rubber mats instead of carpets. This would be more practical for mountainous areas of Japan, or territories such as Hokkaido - where the winters are very snowy. I can't think of a Japanese market model - from any maker - that didn't have a rubber mat option. Still true today, I think. If I get time later today, I will pop the rubber mats out of the 432-R replica project car ( a mid-1970 Z-L ) and take some shots of them to add to this thread. Alan T.

Arne and Mike, I understand where you are coming from, and I apologise if my posts become "tiresome" - but can you both see where I am coming from? This is a forum dedicated to a Japanese car, and - at least notionally I believe - an international forum. Of course I understand the natural weight of bias is towards one particular perspective. It goes without saying. But quoting a bald statement about the "design" of the Z that is clearly erroneous is - I believe - to perpetuate a myth. Can you imagine how these things look to the owner of a non-USA market car? Can we all imagine how it might look to the people that designed, engineered and manufactured these cars? Now that I've hopefuly made my point, and have received the obligatory put-down, I'll shut up for a while. Alan T.

Surely the most relevant meaning attached to the 'Z' signal flag - as far as it applies to the story of 'our' cars - is what it meant to Katayama and Matsuo, between whom the vignette took place. If it was not for this little tale, the 'Z' signal flag would have absolutely no relevance to the story surrounding our cars whatsoever - apart that is from the coincidence of the letter 'Z' signal in some uses of the flag. What it signified to Katayama and Matsuo is what - I suggest - is of importance to us. Don't discount the possibility that they themselves may not have completely understood its historical significance. When I asked Matsuo san about it, his explanation - in the most simple terms that I can translate here by way of explanation - was that to him, in the context of the situation in which it was used, it meant "Let's go for it"............. Alan T.

Mike, Whilst I applaud your pro-active efforts to get close to the original story, and the original spec for the early USA cars, can I please make a point here? You quote Brian Pilati's statement that "...the Z was not originally designed with carpets, they came with rubber mats." as though you believe it to be true. I think repeating such statements gives them more weight, and they gradually get taken as gospel. As I previously pointed out in this thread, the Z most certainly was designed with carpets. In fact, both fully carpeted and rubber-matted versions were available from launch. The distinction of course is that Brian Pilati's quoted quote applies to the first HLS30-U models that were sent to the United States and to Canada. It does not apply to "the Z" in general, and especially not to the Japanese home market models - which were just as much a part of the "design" as any others. Can we PLEASE remember to make this distinction when talking about the "design" of these cars, and the peculiarities and specs of different market models? Apologies for the interjection. Alan T.

Yes, It's got the tiny booster. Needs two feet on the middle pedal really! The car is fitted with the Sports Option MK63-20S four-pot 'FIA' front calipers, and the vented front discs. Front pads are special 'ENDLESS' compound that need quite a lot of warming up before they will really bite. Rear brakes are the standard type drums but with the Sports Option linings. Whole driving philosophy of these cars in period ( for the tracks that they drove on ) was one of keeping up momentum. Later in the '72 season they fitted rear discs to the Works cars, which must have helped a great deal I reckon. They also deleted the booster and fitted a bigger M/C on the Works cars for better 'feel'. Must have been hard work to drive in the long races. It could certainly do with more brakes, but I'd like to try and keep it as period-correct as possible. I'm aiming at mid-1971 type spec, which leaves me stuck with the current setup. Personally speaking, I like both old and new. Everything should be taken on a case-by-case basis. If I had unlimited funds I'd have a very varied and 'catholic' collection of both old and new, and of any market sector / purpose. I don't 'see' nationalities of manufacturers as any kind of excuse for complete dismissal or affection. I find it hard to relate to anybody who would say that they "love" classic cars, but then say that "British" cars "don't do it" for them. If you see something that you have never seen before, would you change your opinion of it once you found out what country it was made in? That seems quite obtuse to me. I guess we won't be seeing you at the Goodwood Festival of Speed then? :cheeky:

OK Tomohawk, I believe you. Two for "moompup" then.