26th-Z

The only thing I can think of is a door pocket I have seen on the rallye cars used to hold maps. I wouldn't necessarily call that installation "aftermarket" but it would not be considered stock production.

Brilliant read and I love the photographs. Makes one simply want to slap the whiners who complain about rust! I cannot help but think that a comprehensive derusting technique such as we have seen with baking or electrolytic immersion process would have helped. Just saw the results of a similar restoration effort. This 1960 Alfa Romeo took Best of Show two weeks ago at the Sarasota Exotic Car Festival. Yes, it CAN be done if you put your mind to it. Thanks Alan!

I like your idea, Ron! Club poster group shot. Great idea. Have fun with it!

Way to go! Very nice...

Yea, I was just reading this thread. Congrats!

Oh, I just gotta jump in! We're missing some collector car true-isms. Collector cars for investment purposes generally return the same rate as fine art, gold coins, antiques. Over time, the price will fluctuate but in the long run the investment should increase. Collector cars are not about supply and demand. The demand is low - comparitively. Although the supply argument is relatively legit, plenty of high volume production automobiles are highly sought and valuable. Carl makes a good point about comparing production cars to limited build cars - you just can't. Different game. Collector cars don't have to be stock. Modified cars can be much more valuable in certain circumstances. Perfect example is ZRush. And finally, something Brock Yates once wrote about the subject. That generally speaking, if the car was high priced and valuable originally, it probably is now.

Just learned this: Walt posted on this site for a while some years ago. I knew him from his time with the Racing Beat Mazda RX-7s. Former Hunterdon resident Walt Bohren, Mazda car racer for many years, drowns in British Virgin Islands February 10, 2011 Hunterdon County Democrat Former Hunterdon resident Walt Bohren, an auto racer in national events in the ‘70s & ‘80s, died Tuesday in an apparent accidental drowning near Tortola, in the British Virgin Islands. Bohren, 63, who had retired to Tortola & lived on his catamaran, was last seen alive by his girlfriend when he left their boat & took a small dinghy to go ashore, according to a report on speedtv.com. He was found floating in the water Tuesday evening & an autopsy is being performed by the BVI medical examiner to determine his cause of death. Bohren was a son of Frank Bohren, the civil engineer who headed the Flemington firm of Bohren & Bohren Engineering Associates for many years. Frank, who lived in Raritan Township & was the township engineer for many years, died in 2000. Early in Walt’s racing career, Frank was his financial backer. Bohren was a staple in the early years of International Motor Sports Association (IMSA) racing, competing during its formative stages in the Baby Grand division. Known for his association w/Mazda, Bohren drove Mazda RX-2s & RX-3s before graduating to RX-7s, which dominated the GTU category for nearly a decade. Driving for the Racing Beat team, Bohren won 5 GTU races en route to the 1980 championship. Another notable win came in the GTU class at the 1981 12 Hours of Sebring at the wheel of an RX-7, speedtv.com reported. Bohren moved to bigger cars for the 1984 IMSA season, driving V8-powered American machinery in the GTO class for the Dingman Bros. He would win his 2nd race for the team that year in Miami, & would also make his 1 & only start at Le Mans, sharing a Rondeau M482 w/American Jim Mullen & French ace Alain Ferte where they finished 13th. He would later race for Buz McCall’s Skoal Bandit Racing GTO team, driving a Chevrolet Camaro thru 1987, his last season in IMSA. By the end of his IMSA career, Bohren had earned 8 victories in GTU & GTO competition. His final race would come in a Porsche at the 1996 12 Hours of Sebring, altho he would later test a Daytona Prototype prior to the 2005 Rolex 24 At Daytona before hanging up his helmet. He got his start in racing in 1969 w/motorcycles, then in 1973 opened his auto racing career in a Formula Ford before switching to Mazdas in 1975. At the time, his "day" job was selling cars for the Z&W Mazda dealership near Princeton. In 1976, he sped his Mazda to victory in the Daytona 100, the final duel in the Challenge 100 series that year. Funeral arrangements have not been announced.

Quite the contrary. Power to weight ratio is EXACTLY the point. Perfect example of that is the fact that the 1970 240Z will outrun your ZX. Read the road test reports.

More from the article... Just 31 at the time, Yoshihiko Matsuo had mouthed off to senior executives at Nissan Motor Co., expressing his disdain for the company's P410 Bluebird. "They told me, 'If you can do better, why don't you prove it?' So I went into the studio and came up with the 240Z. I didn't even have approval to do the project. I just went ahead and did it." "In those days," Matsuo continues, "I had to do it all - the design, the engineering, the packaging. You didn't just design. You had to show that the car sould be manufactured, and it had to be all the correct dimensions for customers." Now I'm not posting this as any gospel but rather evidence of "it depends on who you are talking to".

I would like to add something to this drifting conversation. Just got a copy of "Automotive News" dated August 30, 2010 with coverage of the Nashville convention. The article, by Lindsay Chappell, was mostly an interview with Yoshihiko Matsuo and Randy Rodriguez, designers of the 240Z and 370Z respectively. It would have been impossible for Matsuo to imagine such a conversation 40 years ago. In the mid-1960s when the Z was in development, Nissan barely existed in North America, having only recently begun selling here under the Datsun name. The company was loosely organized in the United States, and US sales were marginal to a company historically focused on Japanese consumers. Communications involving American dealers, their new factory officials and the Japanese corporation were spotty. Datsun's senior U.S. sales executive at the time, Yutaka Katayama, traveled back to Japan regularly in hopes of getting the parent company to be more enthusiastic about American sales. On one visit in the 1960s, he saw the Z project. "Katayama came into the studio and saw what I was working on," Matsuo recalls. "He was really excited. He said; 'I have to have this car in America. I can sell this car." Katayama urged Nissan to approve a larger engine for the U.S. version of Matsuo's sports car. When management refused, Katayama used his connections with Japan's powerful Ministry of International Trade and Industry to pressure Nissan. Katayama got his way, but he made few friends at the company. Nissan seemed to be ambivalent about Matsuo's car. The company had allocated factory production for it of just 300 cars a month. "He was very enthusiastic for the Z," Matsuo says. "He told the company he could sell 3,000 a month in the U.S. We were all very excited about his numbers. "But after he left, we said; ' He doesn't know what he is talking about. He'll never sell that many.'" Katayama's robust U.S. forcast would have required Nissan to invest in plant capacity on a completely different scale - hardly a likely move for a company that doubted the strength of the U.S. market for Japanese cars. "We guaranteed him 3,000 cars a month," Matsuo admits. "But behind his back, we only planned for 1,500 a month."

A model of Paul Newman's 1976 Datsun 510 B-Sedan is here http://www.motorsportcollector.com/cart/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=3_135&products_id=4140

I would recommend "Datsun Z - Fairlady to 280Z" by Brian Long as basic reading. That is probably THE most accurate comprehensive book on the S30 type; in English. The pictures I use most often come from a Japanese publication; Car Graphic magazine, issue 02, 1970. Mr. Matsuo told me that a great deal of the information in the article came from Yoshida san. However, the article is the most comprehensive description I have seen on the subject of styling development. It is all in Japanese though.

That is the one I have. Geese Mike! That's a lot of jackets! Your're the jacket meister!

I don't think there are limitations, but you're going to get a smart-arse comment if you do! There's nothing bad about bringing up an archive if you have something to add. Actually, it's better that way - keeps all the info in one place / thread.

Yes, you will decrease the interest and resulting "value" buy installing plastic emblems and not restoring the metal emblems. A knowledged buyer would know that a 1970 model HLS30 had metal emblems - chrome Z or not. If you have the metal emblems, restore them.

This is the first time I have seen this thread and what I liked was the photograph collection of the cut sections revealing the way the body shell was constructed. We have many conversations over the last few years about how the "chassis" was constructed. The web site photos describe some nice detail.

Matt, I'm south of Tampa and do not know many establishments up there even though I used a machine shop in Ybor. I suggest you contact Carl Beck or Jim Frederick for some good advice. Chris

Supposedly, arguably, the first 100 of any car like the Datsun Sport Z is valuable from a collector's point of view. The Z432 variant is highly coveted. The Mazda RX-7 is a good comparable example. Early examples are very pricey and not easy to come by. Although the early cars had their quirks, as Ron points out, they were the lightest and fastest of all the HLS30 models.

Guten tag Rubber Duck!

I'm very surprised. I would sell HLS30-00027 for that kind of money. Seriously. But the economics of this sort of project have been well hashed over. The cost seriously depends on your expectations of the finished product. The cost also depends on who does the labor and for what rate. Some guys prefer to pay someone. Some prefer to do it themselves. Some buy replacement parts and some restore the parts they have. For me, I have always worked on cars so I'm doing most of my own work. I contract out many different things, but the process one would take for this car is similar to what I am doing to Her Majesty the 26th. HLS30-00026 (Her Majesty) has around $4,500 in metal work alone including the electrolite dip. Paint was another $5,000. The engine and trans represent another $5,000. I have quite a bit invested in re-plating bolts and fasteners. I can only imagine what the chrome plating cost is going to be. My original optomistic estimate was $30,000 but now I am optomistically thinking $40,000 or more. It wouldn't suprise me at all to see someone spend $70,000 to $100,000 on a restoration like this. And we will see cars of this value soon. HLS30-00017 is lurking in a restoration shop and I'm positive that HLS30-00019 will be finished soon. I think HLS30-00052 is close to being finished. No...I'm very surprised to see the results of this auction. Surprised at the sales rhetoric from the seller and surprised at the bidding results.

Datsun film from the 1971 Trans-Am championship

Way to go, Will! This looks like it will be a lot of fun.

Of course the mule story is lore but if it were true, that would make Her Majesty the 26th more famous as the very first car intended to be sold to the public. Poor Jim and Rick with their "mules".

Woo hoo! Just got a Canon EOS 60D.