240Z - Origin of the Species

[acf321]

I've really wanted to pick a few of the more learned types on this subject for some time, and this appears to be the best forum to do so. Pardon me for not spending two weeks looking for this info on other global sites, if it does already exist in detail. 

 

Thus far i've read about how Goetz may have (or not) designed the 240Z and the bits about 'Mr K' at Nissan and i'm pretty clear on this. Have also read notes to the effect that the design was largely based on the e-type and the 911. Also understand that Japanese manufacturers wanted their own genuine sports car at a time where Euro and America was having a field day at the races.

 

I have heard from several sources over the years that the 240Z was based on Ferrari's 250GTO (don't laugh!!). I have a few older friends who own 240's and one of which tells me its so very underrated as a collectors car as it was very much based on this actual car (this guy is in his 60's and was there at the time, so i'm wondering if there is any truth to it). The Ferrari was front engined, 3.0L, 5 speed manual, and correct me if I'm out of line but someone at Nissan must have broken into the Maranello plant to 'take' a set of the headlight covers to use on their own car ... they've virtually identical (which might go some way to describe what the Z designers were thinking at the time).

 

Other point to remember at this point is, the GTO was a world beater and was Italian ... The Yanks has the AC Cobra at this time, and poor old Japan was out of the loop. So presumably they looked at the 'world best' cars, ie GTO to get some inspiration.

 

Aside from the cursory.."it looks a bit like a lovechild from an e-type and 911" does anyone know if there was infact any GTO to its geaneology? I want to believe there was, and looking at the two cars from the front, and from the side, there is more than an obvious resemblance.

 

Cheers

 

Adam.

[.]

I have seen photos of the Nissan design team working on their designs and on the walls around them are the various sports cars of the day. I don't recall if I saw a GTO among them but I would be surprised if it was missed. There were certainly 911s, Triumphs, Jags, Corvettes, Mustangs. So if the GTO was missed I would not understand why. Plus there is the similarity between the 240z wheelbase and the GTO. Coincidence?

 

I wouldn't go so far as saying the engine and gearbox specs were based on the GTO. A five speed box was the best to be had at the time so it was natural to gravitate to it. As for straight six, Nissan inherited the basis for the L series engine when they merged with Prince. Prince had been developing the inline six for a few years in the skyline. So any similarities to the GTO drive train are probably by chance.

[acf321]

thanks galderdi ... per chance, do you know what the wheel bases are of each car?

[Zedman240®]

I heard the L series engine was based on the Mercedez Benz engine of the mid-late sixties. Look under the bonnet of an old Merc and compare rocker covers. You'd think it will bolt on to your L28!

When Nissan merged with Prince, they took the holy S20 engine and installed it into the 432 & 432R zeds for the performance.

[luvemfast]

I heard the L series engine was based on the Mercedez Benz engine of the mid-late sixties.

I'm with Dimitri.

Thats what I understood too!

[HS30-H]

The original Ferrari 250 GTO's type '539/62 Comp.' chassis had a 2400mm wheelbase, with 1351mm front track and 1346mm rear track.

 

1969 debut S30-series Z chassis wheelbase was 2305mm, with a front track of 1355mm and rear track of 1345mm.

 

I don't think wheelbase and track are any indications of "copying" ( surely such dimensions are based on drivetrain and ergonomics? ), but anyway we are talking about designs with the best part of seven years or more between them. If you want to pin the charge of "copying" on Nissan's design team, then I think you have at least chosen the wrong candidate for them to have "copied" from. Maybe you'd be better off citing the 275 GTB, or even the 365 GTB 'Daytona' ( even though that was not in production until after the S30-series Z had been penned ). Even better candidates might be the ASA 1000GT and the Maserati Ghibli. You can see a little bit of the same DNA in all of them, but nobody ever seems to accuse them all of copying eachother - do they?

 

But really all this "copy" talk is just the same old claptrap, isn't it? If anyone was going to 'design' a two-seater sports car in the mid 1960s then they'd most likely come up with something fairly similar to what everyone else was coming up with. That is, something influenced by the 'zeitgeist' of the times and either directly - or indirectly - influenced by what had gone before it. Of course, at that time much of the major 'design' ( read 'styling' ) kudos was rightly going to Italy because of its unique situation at that time. The Italian coachbuilding industry was at or near its peak, and if you were a designer or stylist anywhere in the world you would have been looking at their work in showrooms and in print, and being influenced by it whether you liked it or not. There's nothing new under the sun really. Nobody works in a vacuum.

 

What I can't understand is why everyone always talks about the Japanese car designers as "copyists", whilst everybody else seems to get a free pass to do what they like. The people throwing around these accusations are quite often sitting inside a piece of architecture that owes something to ancient civilisations far away from their own, and eating and drinking from plates and cups that owe something to ancient eastern civilisations and technology. It's as though the orientals are all "copyists", but occidentals are free to imitate without fear of being accused of copying. So the Japanese 'Diet' building is a "copy" of something considered 'western', whilst the 'Capitol' and 'White House' in Washington DC are symbols of 'American' power and aspirations - and not simply "copied" from ancient Greece, ancient Rome or pre-Renaissance Italy.......

 

The design / styling and engineering of the '240Z' ( the S30-series Z range, actually ) was nothing to do with 'Count' Albrecht Goertz, very little to do with Yutaka Katayama, and it was not a direct "copy" of anything. Chief Designer Yoshihiko Matsuo and his team were natural fans of some of the Italian coachbuilders ( who wasn't? ) but they were working to a brief that was far more restricted than the styling artisans they admired. They had to use a newer 'Unibody' type construction, use adapted mechanicals from other Nissan models as well as some purpose-built mechanicals, and had to keep the bean-counters happy at the same time. You could argue that their car was a little bit out of date styling wise in some details, but overall they did a fantastic job under the circumstances. In fact, they were forced to make changes to the shape of the car that they tried to resist ( Matsuo would have made that roofline lower had he been allowed to ). To reduce their work to mere "copying" is to miss the point completely, as well as being ( unintentionally, I hope ) somewhat demeaning of their hard work. 

 

These things are interesting to discuss, but can we please agree that almost everybody who designs, styles or engineers something is going to be influenced by - or make reference to - something that came before it, either intentionally or subliminally?   

 

 

[NZeder]

I believe Nissan never had a license with Merc however Prince Motor Company did (this is my understanding) and Nissan had already started the L-gata design well before the Prince murger. So it might look like it but they are quite a bit different the L-gata is a better engine.

 

Count Goetz did not design the S30 - yes he was contracted to Nissan to assist with the design of a new sports car however that sports car project failed before it got of the ground. I guess it could be said that some of his ideas influenced the young Japanese design team that then, with a clean sheet of paper, we on to design the S30 as we know and love it today. I believe Goetz has more influence/input into the original siliva CSP311 than the S30. This is just miss information that Goetz designed the zed/S30 he was long departed from his contract by then.

 

I am sure many of euro's of the day were used during the design process as well as some of the idea's/drawing that the project that Goetz was commissioned on were also used.

[HS30-H]

I heard the L series engine was based on the Mercedez Benz engine of the mid-late sixties. Look under the bonnet of an old Merc and compare rocker covers. You'd think it will bolt on to your L28!

 

No, "based on" is well wide of the mark. The Prince 'G7' engine licensed some Mercedes-patented details for its cam followers and cam drive arrangement, but Nissan's L-series engine was designed and already in production well before it absorbed Prince in 1966. There's no direct link in design ( Mercedes would have sued if Nissan had infringed any patents ) and there's no Mercedes-to-Prince-to-Nissan chain either. Hiroshi Iida and his team at Nissan admitted that they were 'influenced' by what they saw on both the Mercedes and Prince engines, but they were influenced by a lot of other things too. Most of this "Mercedes copy" talk comes from people who were trying to talk-up the Nissan engine as having some kind of blue blood, and relied on people looking at the shape of the cam covers rather than looking any deeper........

 

When Nissan merged with Prince, they took the holy S20 engine and installed it into the 432 & 432R zeds for the performance.

 

The S20 engine didn't exist until after Prince had been absorbed by Nissan. Before that, there was the 'GR8' - but that was quite a different design ( especially in its head design, cam drives, oil pump and distributor drives ). The Prince 'GR8' became the Nissan 'GR8' by default through the merger, and the 'GR8' was redesigned, rejigged and basically detuned to become the 'S20' for road car use. They share DNA ( especially in the basic block design ), but they were not really the same engines - despite the contemporary advertising trying to convince us they were.

[NZeder]

I only wish I could read Japanese so then I could read the many S30 books I have at home from land that gave us the S30. I have never seen in any of these books, a picture of Count Albrecht Goertz or his name in print. However there is always the names of Yutaka Katayama (known Mr K in the US), Yoshihiko Matsuo and others.

[acf321]

Alan, Mike and others, thanks so much for your insightful comments on this topic. I knew I would open a can of worms and am glad to read your responses.

 

I hope not to have insinuated that the S30Z is a 'copy' but rather heavily infleunced by the 250GTO, for I only wish it was !!! Of course I get all that stuff about copying and influence, and if you study the whitehouse, yes you DO see the Parthenon, and if you study an I-MAC computer you DO see B&O and if you study a Chanel diving watch you see a Rolex Submariner ... etc etc etc etc ... so yes Alan, the Aryans are also responsible for this kind of reprehensible behaviour too. 

 

By the way ... Google Aston Martin One 77 and looking at a side shot... can someone try to convince me they did not 'copy' it from the magnifique 240Z !!!!!! I dead serious on this point ... look at the 1/4 windows, they look to be straight from a Nissans part catalogue!

 

Thanks for your contributions ... hugely interesting .. and yes Jane ..a history section would be good!

 

 

 

[xa1973]

 

Take a look at any car maker since the late 60's and most of them have been inspired / influenced by others during the realization process, the hand made Silvia is the 240z in retrospect and would have been there after as this was the first attempt at a sports car for the American market by the Nippons albeit not suitable for numerous reasons , similar to the path of the hand made DeLorean

 

I have seen the pictures of the design team ( with their high wasted trousers choking their gonads ) during the initial phase of the 240Z with all the great classics on the wall and agree there are many many similarity's shared with these cars..

 

[HS30-H]

.......the hand made Silvia is the 240z in retrospect and would have been there after as this was the first attempt at a sports car for the American market by the Nippons albeit not suitable for numerous reasons......

 

Yikes. Sorry, but I don't believe the CSP311 Silvia was any kind of "attempt at a sports car for the American market". If you believed that, you'd have to wonder what exactly it's underpinnings ( the SP311 'Fairlady' roadster ) and its predecessors were for? Of course, the answer is that they were cars designed with the Japanese home market in mind, but with an only half serious eye on exports ( which Nissan arguably wasn't in a position to undertake in any great volume at that point ). Why does everyone forget about the needs, dreams and desires of the Japanese themselves?

 

I have seen the pictures of the design team ( with their high wasted trousers choking their gonads ) during the initial phase of the 240Z with all the great classics on the wall and agree there are many many similarity's shared with these cars..

 

Here's a pic of S30-series Z Chief Designer Yoshihiko Matsuo at his drawing board around 1968. Behind him you can see some of his design sketches, and none of them are pictures of cars that already exist. There's also a large picture of a Boeing 727, so I think it's fair to say that his influences were pretty diverse to say the least...... 

 

[NZeder]

Alan, I see what looks to be a pic of a S30 estate concept - years ago I recall seeing a picture of a S30 estate. Now this was pre the common photoshop type applications so it was either a real photo of a concept or old school photo/negative type setup using a S30 front end and another sports type car estate aka Reliant Scimitar

 

So do you know of a such a concept or the photo I can taking about?

 

Cheers

Mike

[HS30-H]

Alan, Mike and others, thanks so much for your insightful comments on this topic. I knew I would open a can of worms and am glad to read your responses.

 

acf321,

I just typed out a thoughtful and lengthy reply to you, pressed the 'POST' button and - hey presto - it disappeared! Bloody hell! Oh well, it might not be such a bad thing.......

 

Thanks for taking the comments in good spirit. I think that - as fans of these cars - it's good for us all to talk about stuff like this.

 

I take your point about the Aston 

 

Anyway, I put two pics up on ImageShack for that disappearing post - so I might as well try and link to them again. Hopefully similarly-angled photos of a '62 250 GTO and a '69 Fairlady-Z 432. I think the rear quarters of the GTO are far more 'muscular' that the Z's, and the bonnet line of the GTO is far lower than the Z - due to the low profile of the dry sumped V12, and the tall wet sumped L6 ( although the S20 was shorter ) of the Z. Matsuo san said he wanted the bonnet line lower on the Z, but the engine wouldn't allow it. He also said he wanted to have a lower roofline for the cabin, but he wasn't allowed to..........

 

 

     

[HS30-H]

Alan, I see what looks to be a pic of a S30 estate concept - years ago I recall seeing a picture of a S30 estate. Now this was pre the common photoshop type applications so it was either a real photo of a concept or old school photo/negative type setup using a S30 front end and another sports type car estate aka Reliant Scimitar

 

So do you know of a such a concept or the photo I can taking about?

 

Cheers

Mike

 

Mike,

I think I know the pics you are talking about, but I don't think I have any copies of them. Wasn't it a private ( aftermarket ) creation in the early Seventies? I can see it in my head, but can't remember where I saw it........

 

That 'breadvan' drawing on the wall behind Matsuo is quite well known. I think there were several versions of that mooted, but none ever got to production. I think it was a little ahead of its time, and the Reliant Scimitar took the same concept and ran with it......

 

Actually, Matsuo san has some of those drawings on the wall of his office in Tokyo today. 

[HS30-H]

Yes, Matsuo san is still active. He has a company called 'PDS' based in Tokyo, and does some design consultancy for several different companies. He does a lot of work with journalists these days too.

 

Very nice, very modest, man. It's fascinating to chat to him about 'our' cars. Really brings home to you just what a complicated process it was to get a car designed, engineered and into production inside a big company like that in the late Sixties. Lots of departments pulling in slightly different directions, lots of new laws and regulations telling you that you can't do what you wanted to do, and accountants telling you that what you wanted to do is too expensive - so change it or lose it.

 

But different times, with lots of opportunities and possibilities, and an overall feeling of moving forward. Not like today! 

[acf321]

Alan,

 

And for the latest 'copy' of the 'copy' of a 250GTO.... if you get my drift !!

 

Now study the profile and tell me its not a 'bit' like a 240Z!!! (albeit an A$3m one).

 

Cheers.

 

Adam

[Lynton]

I do have an article on this but I think copy right is an issue it was passed to me privately. Lynton

[NZeder]

I do have an article on this but I think copy right is an issue it was passed to me privately. Lynton

That's the pic I was thinking of. Looks to be a LHD state side from the plate (what I can make out). I would assume this was a custom conversion much like the many hot-hods back in the day during the mid 70's. Back then there were many VW kit car and body mods ie station wagons for the beetle and the like so maybe someone thought it would be good to make a Zed wagon and this was the result. Much like many a man made a ute from a wagon or convertibles from standard coupes etc.

 

Was this conversion ever published in any magazine? If yes maybe we could find a copy for us to read (even offline in the old school print format - I would purchase a copy to protect copyright etc just interested to know the story behind the photo)

 

Cheers

Mike

[.]

There is a guy who parks a 260z convertable in the parking lot near my work. I think it was shipped up from Victoria