HS30-H

Sorry, but with all due respect the US title and any customs paperwork are not reliable witnesses to the production date of this car. My own 1970 Fairlady Z-L was 'titled' as a "1976 Fairlady Turbo" when it was originally imported to the United Kingdom by a USAF pilot in 1979, as the British vehicle licensing agency simply didn't know what they were dealing with... 'S30' prefixed chassis numbers produced in year 1969 ran from 'S30-00001' through 'S30-00953'. For 1970 year production the range was 'S30-00954' through 'S30-04330' and 'S30-04501' through 'S30-04504' (note the 171 car gap between '04330' and '04501'). This is not "Model Year" or 'Series', it is manufacturing date. Alan T.

The hand-written kanji next to the big '69' on the warranty booklet says 'Nen Shiki'. A rough translation would be '69 year style'. This does not mean the car was actually built in 1969, and I would not place too much emphasis on it. It has as much relevance as the 'Series One' and 'Series Two' type comments in the grand scheme of things.. I'd also have to say that if someone made a purchase order for a car in 1969, and had to wait the best part of ten months for it to be delivered, then it must have been a pretty long queue that they were at the back of... No, it's not a purchase order it's just a three year new car warranty booklet. Look, there's no chance of this being a 1969 build year car. We know enough about these cars to confirm that it was built in the second half of 1970, and persisting with the romantic but nevertheless mistaken idea that it was built in 1969 is going to hinder the sale not aid it. It's going to be a bone of contention in the kind of uneducated discourse you often see on the likes of Bring A Trailer, and it is a distraction from the truth of the car itself. Better to accept it is a 1970 build year, and a rare survivor of the type with a lot of potential for a new owner to add value by putting some work into it.

"Appraised" by whom? I can only conclude that this person did not know what they were looking at. As stated above, I have a lower chassis numbered Fairlady Z-L myself and it was made in the second half of 1970. Nissan Shatai's production records and the records of the Japanese motor vehicle licensing agency contradict the claim that your car was built in 1969. If you look closely at all the manufacturing date codes and quality control stamps on the componentry of the car they will show a majority of June/July/August/September 1970 dates. And here's no "numbers matching" in the accepted sense for these cars, as the chassis tags on Japanese market cars did not record the original engine number in the way that north American market cars did. Sorry, but it's a 1970 car. You'll put yourself in a stronger position regarding the sale if you embrace that fact. Good luck. Alan T.

Well spotted, Mike. The page with the Showa dates in the wallet with the owners manual is the dealer warranty, and it shows the 'Shatai Bango' (body/chassis number) as '03814' and type as 'S30', so it is 'S30-03814', a 'Nissan Fairlady Z-L' built around July 1970. Japanese market cars didn't have door jamb tags, or dash-mounted chassis number tags either. I have a 1970 Fairlady Z-L too. It has the chassis number 'S30-03761', so just 53 apart in the same numbering sequence. The "Series 2 body with Series 1 hatch" type comments are fairly common when people look at early Japanese models. They are often being fooled by the shape and style of the solid, non-vented Japanese market rear quarter emblems. They were round in shape, non-vented and had a big letter 'Z' in them, so they get mistaken for the generic vented "series 2" quarter emblems shared by all models in all markets:

I think it would certainly have been the JATCO 3N71A, as this was already being fitted and sold in the Japanese market in C10-series Skylines and other models by the end of 1968/early 1969. By the time of the 'Kaku U' north American tour it would have been a bit late (and fairly pointless) for them to have anything other than the 3N71A in one of the cars. Good story regarding your auto-equipped 510. Must have been a pretty big leap of faith in those days to buy such a car with the great distances between proper servicing dealers. I hope your loyalty was rewarded!

As 26th-Z pointed out, the subject of Automatic Transmission-equipped S30-series Zs - when framed by terms such as "earliest" and "oldest on the road" - has to take into account that Auto-equipped Zs were available in Japan much earlier than they were in north America. Having said that, at least one of the 'Kaku U' north American test/dealer publicity run cars from 1969 was Auto trans equipped. Not a true production car, but it did have a chassis number. The 3N71A transmission was made by JATCO (Japan Automatic Transmission Company), a joint enterprise by several companies under the BW patents..

No, there is Japanese factory documentation confirming that the majority of protective plating on the car was Zinc, and the yellow 'gold' finish is gold-passivated Zinc Chromate.

The answer is that none were. The finish you are thinking of is (yellow) gold-passivated Zinc Chromate plating.

Something we've discussed before on classiczcars.com: Post #9 in particular...

You're quite likely the only person who thinks he knows the exact day on which his car was made...

It's the ZG-specific towing bracket, as Kats pointed out previously...

Well done. Keep up the good work.

Turning his "Chinese Junk" slogan into his forum signature was a poor choice, in my opinion. It verged on politicking, and sometimes came off as a bit of a xenophobic rant. People should be free to buy what they want, and personally I don't care where things come from as long as they are well designed, well made and don't rip anybody off. And 'we' were copying China before China copied 'us'. When you think about it, this forum probably would not exist if Blue's type of sensibilities had been dominant 46 years ago. Does "Don't buy Japanese junk" ring a bell...?

The floor-pan 'pockets' are nothing to do with any Factory roll bar/'safety bar'/cage or related structure.

And just like so much written and spoken about Yutaka Katayama, it has a mistake or misapprehension in every sentence.

Tell him, not me. He's the one using Imperial.

I had to temporarily dumb myself down in order to realise that "visually appeared" should be "visually impaired"... Obviously that post was Made In China. So, Blue had more than 4 inches. Who knew?

Caveat emptor, I think you'll find. Cuiusvis hominis est errare, nullius nisi insipientis in errore perseverare.

If I know I'm right I'll stand fast. Fact is I can tell if a car is an S31 just from a picture, but it depends on the picture. So the answer is both yes and no. I don't know what point you are trying to make here. The auction description is fairly clear, and at least clear enough to establish that none of the three cars is an S31. If you remember, it was you who brought the term 'S31' into the topic - despite you not really knowing what it meant or what it was applied to. Hopefully you know a little more now? Here's a photo of an S31 dashboard, showing its 180km/h speedometer in situ:

There are three cars listed in the auction description. One is (clearly!) a 2-seater made before the end of 1973, and the other two - a 2-seater and a 2/2 - are listed as 1973 and 1974 respectively. The photos appear to confirm this. Do you think the description is incorrect? A 180kph speedo could easily be from an S30-series Z. Do you think it isn't?

It's not that difficult to tell the difference, but when you know the production year (because the auction seller mentions it, for example...) it makes it even easier. The filename includes 'S31' because it depicts an S31, and because the catalogue/flyer it comes from is for the S31 range...

Pretty much the same as all the 1973-up Japanese market cars:

Why would be an "early A"? You're talking about a cross-pin attaching the gear stick to 'ears' on the trans case, which already tells us it isn't an 'A' type 5spd. It's not difficult to distinguish between and FS5C71A and an FS5C71B even when both are in the car. The 'A' type has a straight gear stick and has three main housing castings (bellhousing, centre case and tail case) whilst the 'B' type has two (combined bellhousing/centre case and tail case) so looking at the bellhousing from the engine bay (you can clearly see the split line where the bellhousing attaches) or the gearstick and its attachment (by taking off the gaiter) should show you the difference. Additionally, an 'A' type 5spd will not fit into a 'late' centre console car without a special gearstick. It needs a big dog-leg kink put into it to clear the console in the forward gear positions (1st, 3rd & 5th) so that too should be visible by taking the gaiter off. EuroDat, I don't know where all the 280Z, 620 and 720 stuff is coming from? Why make this more complicated by introducing ideas from left field? We could suggest a whole raft of other transmissions too, but seems pointless and unlikely to me. As I've already pointed out, if the car is indeed a 1973 production 'Euro' market HLS30 it would have been fitted with the FS5C71B type transmission. If you think that the transmission is the same one that it left the factory with, then that is what it will be.

We've discussed them several times on this forum in the past. 'S31' was the name given to the updated S30-series cars that complied with new emissions, safety and consumer law legislation for the Japanese market. They were introduced in July 1976 and were produced until the all-new S130-series models were introduced in late 1978. This forum's search function seems to be about as useful as a chocolate teapot at the moment, so here's a link to a HybridZ thread instead: http://forums.hybridz.org/topic/93310-what-models-were-s30-and-s31/

Luckily the people who live in and visit Gunma Prefecture know that it is on Honshu, and around 1,500km from Okinawa.