yumpmeister

It was sad news that Bill Blydenstein had passed away. I actually wrote the piece about BBR and Aki Moroe posted it on his website. I have a 240RS and I know a number of other owners around the world. They are quite rare now, in particular FJ24 parts.

The Nissan 240RS was a vehicle Nissan built on the production line in a run of 200 vehicles to satisfy Group B homologation in late 1982. The car was homologated on 1st January 1983. The 240RS was based on the Silvia S110 2 litre RS model, a 2 door pillar-less coupe with the FJ20 engine fitted. The 240RS had a 2.4 litre 16 valve twin-cam engine designated FJ24 and they ran on twin Solex 50mm carbs and it was unique to the 240RS. They were built solely to rally and consequently the cars were sold by Nissan with no type approval or warranty. Nissan Japan ran a works team and Nissan Team Europe was run by Bill Blydenstein in the Great Britain. Bill Blydenstein Racing (BBR) was a company based at the old railway station at Shepreth, nr Cambridge in the 1970's and '80’s. They had a fantastic reputation as a Rally Team having run the “Dealer Team Vauxhall” Rally Team since the mid 1970's, developing the Vauxhall Chevette HS & HSR into extremely competitive rally cars for General Motors. Due to General Motors' marketing shift towards Opel instead of Vauxhall BBR would lose the Vauxhall contract at the end of 1982. With the aid of driver Tony Pond, Bill Blydenstein negociated a deal with Nissan to run the Nissan 240RS in Europe for the 1983 season. Little did he know that over the next three years he would struggle with constant under – budgeting to develop the car and the speed in which Group B competition grew. From April 1984 BBR negociated a contract with Nissan to market and sell the 240RS worldwide except in the USA and Japan. BBR imported cars into Northern Ireland and registered them there. This was a loop hole that allowed them to bring the cars into England whilst avoiding type approval issues. BBR offered the cars for sale in a straight from the factory road car specification at £12,500. This consisted of a right or left hand drive car with a 220bhp wet sumped engine, front and rear vinyl seats, rally homologated suspension, transmission and disc brakes all round. This was in no way a rally car but the basis to build one. Blydenstein offered a Clubmans Group B car for £15,515 which had basic safety equipment fitted including an FIA roll cage and sumpguard. Modified camshafts lifted power to 235bhp but the engine remained wet sumped. For £24,990 BBR would seam-weld, strengthen and install the necessary equipment to bring a car up to “works replica” forest spec whilst £26,240 would buy you an all singing and dancing tarmac car with approximately 260bhp. The only governing factor being the depths of your pockets ! In 1984 BBR sold 42 cars and over the whole Group B period sold approximately 70 plus cars. From 1983 onwards BBR was constantly improving the car in areas of priority within the budget Nissan gave them to work to. The first challenge BBR faced was removing a flat spot in the FJ24 engine. BBR looked at the cam shafts from Nissan and re-profiled the exhaust cam, virtually matching the BBR RE3 cam shaft that they had developed for the Vauxhall Chevette HSR. This effectively removed the flat spot and improved the torque spread. The next thing they looked at was suspension. BBR realised very quickly that the 240RS was blessed with a low centre of gravity. This led to BBR developing spring and damper settings that allowed more ground clearance for UK forest events. The combination of a tough, reliable and well set up car that was affordable to club competitors meant that many 240RS's appeared in UK and other National Championships in the hands of up and coming drivers.The British National Championships in 1984 and 1985 were won by Dai Llewellin and Mark Lovell respectively. By then Blydenstein realised that his core business was now at club level and to make the cars more attractive to competitors on a tight budget he began sourcing non-Nissan replacement parts in the UK. These included items such as fuel tanks, sumpguards, suspension parts etc. By 1985 Group B cars such as Peugeot's 205 T16 and Lancia's Delta S4 made Nissan's 240RS and other cars like it uncompetitive in the World and European Championship's. This aside, up until the end of Group B in 1986, the Nissan could still put in a strong performance in the right hands. In 1985 Nissan homologated a steering rack to replace the original troublesome steering boxes and also homologated brakes, gearbox and other items to improve performance. In 1986 in the British Open Championship, a hotly contested series, both Louise Aitken-Walker and Simon Davison achieved top ten finishes on virtually all rounds. Unfortunately for most Group B machines the ban at the end of 1986 meant retirement or destruction in RallyCross events but due to the 240RS being normally aspirated and conventional in set up it continued to be competitive in the UK and Middle East Championships. Ian Roberton won the 1988 British National Championship in Louise Aitken-Walker's 1986 Championship car. Sadly though over these years in lower levels of the sport people who bought 240RS's bought a car which was not on general sale in the UK. This meant that any heavy damage to the shell was expensive to repair and consequently the remaining value in the vehicle was in the engine and transmission. I suspect that many cars have been destroyed due to this and certainly in the UK in the late eighties and into the nineties 240RS engines powered a number of rear wheel drive Peugeot 205's, Ford Escort's, a Toyota Starlet and even a Metro 6R4 !