HS30-H

Gazundheit.

I'm going to bow out of this thread for a little while as I have a 12 hour flight to look forward to. I'll set you some homework for while I'm away: Try looking up the results for all the races in the World GT Championships from 1969 through 1978 (hint: whilst Nissan was making and selling the S30-series Z) and see if you can find any Nissan/Datsun product in there.

They won all three. That was my point. not JUST the one that their road cars were eligible for. They were actively competing - with Works and Works-supported privateer cars as well as customers simply racing Porsche product, in multiple INTERNATIONAL championships. This isn't just pipsqueak local stuff. You honestly don't see the significance? I'm not sure if you're being deliberately obtuse, or if you are genuinely ignorant of what World Championship GT racing actually entailed in the period we are concerned with here (for me, that's the production and sales period of the S30-series Z)? You're busy telling me that IMSA GTU class wins are 'victories over Porsche' when Porsche's focus was on the GTO class above (because their premium GT product slotted straight into that class) and on the major 'classic' races that were taking part contemporaneously up the road (in Daytona, Sebring and Watkins Glen for a start...). Porsche were winning all over the world in multiple classes while Sharp was winning in Pigsnuckle Alabama. There is simply no comparison.

It was called The International Cup for GT Cars (that's 'International' in the global sense, not in the American sense...) and it was part of the FIA World Sports Car Championship. The cars were not prototypes (that was the World Championship of Makes) but - as I made clear up-thread - PRODUCTION based cars. The winning cars for Porsche during the '68 through '76 period were the 911R, 911S, 911RS and 911RSR - pretty much in that order too. So production based, homologated cars, a road-going version of which you could buy in a Porsche showroom. They would also sell you all the bits to go racing with it. I'm sorry but Nissan simply were not on the same page. History. It's just one damned thing after another...

I have a hunch - and yes, it would be difficult to prove unless we both took turns to sit in the Mastermind chair - that I know more, much more, about the Z's racing and rallying history, and Nissan's racing and rallying history, than you. Sorry to be so gauche, but there it is. I probably would not have been motivated to get involved in your thread but for the utter nonsense you wrote about Porsche. You're probably a lost cause, but it pains me to think of anyone else swallowing that garbage without having a little bit of a different point of view (let's call it 'reality'...) to think about too.

I'm sorry but privateers who are using Porsche products are no more 'Porsche' than Bob Sharp was 'Nissan', and I'm not sure that there's any real in-depth understanding of homologation and series regulations there either. Rhetorical question: If Sharp needed 15" wheels then why didn't he just source them and bolt them on? Why was it up to Porsche to - as you write - "request" them...? And if I lay some manners on an unsuspecting Porsche driver at the traffic light grand prix on the way to work in the morning, have I "beaten Porsche"?

Posting photos of cars is easy. Discussing the technical details of the cars in the photos requires perhaps a little more commitment. If you can, will you please explain the sentence quoted above?

The International Cup for GT Cars - which, as I mentioned above, Porsche won in 1968, '69, '70, '71, '72, '73, '74 and '75 - was a world series expressly for homologated versions of production cars. The fact that Porsche dominated that series whilst also dominating The World Championship of Makes really ought to tell you something about their racing focus and their products. It seems you are looking down the wrong end of a telescope at SCCA C Production and IMSA GTU and telling me that they are 'more important'? I think you might not have the full deck of cards in your Top Trumps pack...

Beat the Porsche drum? I'm simply trying to bring a bit of levity and common sense to the table. I'm a car fan and, perhaps just as importantly, a motorsports fan and I try not to let marque loyalty get in the way of an evenly balanced view of motorsport history. Your "Porsche have always been careful to select where they will complete" makes me smile. Porsche competed just about everywhere, and in just about any class that their products were eligible for. It was Nissan (Datsun was just a badge) who were - by necessity - far more careful about what they entered, and where. It's in the very nature of the two companies, and the differences in product range, philosophy, location and - important this - world economics. Racing was in Porsche's blood, an integral and vital part of their being and directly related to the majority of their products. Nissan, not so. SCCA C Production in the early to mid Seventies? Sorry but this is almost the definition of pipsqueak. Great, but local, not direct factory efforts and subject to a great numbers of vagaries. It's laughable to hype it up as 'Porsche vs Nissan', with Nissan winning. Same goes for IMSA's GTU class. Painting Bob Sharp's successes in GTU as some kind of victory over the might of the Porsche factory, whilst Porsche were mopping up the GTO class one rung above him, is verging on delusion.

What were the Zs racing against in the SCCA C Production class though? Take a peep and remind yourself. "....in '70's USA the Zed has a far more impressive racing history than the P car and beat it regularly where the playing field was around even." LOL. Only if you wear blinkers. Again, I'm a die-hard Nissan and Z fan but stuff like this looks nuts from where I'm sitting. Porsche were busy winning proper international series and the big 'classic' races - which included those at Sebring, USA and Daytona USA. Zed more impressive racing history? Nope. That playing field you mentioned included the new car showroom on the high street. Love it as I do, Nissan's S30-series basically had no answer for what was on sale in the Porsche showroom up the road.

In 1976? In 1976 Sharp was racing in the GTU class against Porsche 914/6s and various privateers in fairly obsolete models. Meanwhile Porsche were totally dominating the races overall and winning the GTO class, which was their main focus. Z basics? The Bob Sharp car doesn't look to me like anything you could walk into a Nissan showroom and buy. Meanwhile, you could turn up at a Porsche showroom and drive home in a 3.0 RSR. I'm a diehard Nissan and Z fan, but let's not kid ourselves here. Porsche won the International Championship for Makes in 1969, '70, '71, '76, '77, '78 and '79 and the International Cup for GT Cars in 1968, '69, '70, '71, '72, '73, '74 and '75 and the new World Championship for Sports Cars in 1976, '78 and '79. And for good reason.

I'm surprised you went to all that trouble with the ebay rear spoiler. As Gavin has pointed out, the OEM ones had six mounting studs moulded into them and were the proper shape underneath. The inner pair of mounting studs lined up with access holes in the underside of the tailgate, which were put there for that very purpose... Here's a manky one as another example. This is the 'second' type, as fitted to the UK and Euro models and it is made from a very dense pressure-moulded white ABS type material (the 'first'/432-R ribbed type was a classic hand-laid fibreglass roving and resin job) and it has the raised section on the RH side for emblem mounting: These mounting studs had rubber washers between the stud base and the tailgate skin (missing here): Note the raised area for the emblems: Note also the 'step' in the bottom surface at both ends where the spoiler hangs over the tailgate. This is where the rubber seal fitted.

That particular design was never fitted to the 432-R. It's the 'second' type, as fitted to the UK and European market cars. The 432-R type was the one with the ribs on the front-facing side.

That design of rear spoiler - when supplied as a factory fitment - had a rubber seal on the bottom edge in the area which hung over each end of the tailgate. This sealed the spoiler to the rear quarters when the tailgate was in the closed position.

Last week yet another Australian 240Z arrived here in the UK (a 1970 built car). Late last year I visited a UK-based business which had no less than three ex-Australian market 240Zs on their premises on that day. If your cars are priced at a level that makes buying and shipping them to other countries financially viable, they WILL get poached from under your noses. THAT is how what is happening in the rest of the world has something to do with your own domestic market.

Some of us have tried making changes to Wikipedia entries, only to see them changed back again soon after. It's a fool's errand. If you're interested - and I would not blame you if you aren't - you could look into it all a little deeper via sources other than Wikipedia. The dumbed-down story above of Yamaha taking their prototype design to Toyota, resulting in the Toyota 2000GT, is easily debunked when you look at what went into the Toyota 2000GT's creation from the points of view of the people concerned. One of the best single sources is the (bloody expensive, but superb) book 'Toyota 2000GT' by Shin Yoshikawa, which makes it clear that the Yamaha-built Nissan A550X was used simply as an example of what Yamaha could do for Toyota. Jiro Kawano of Toyota, the team leader for the project which would become the Toyota 2000GT, already had his own ideas and nothing - absolutely nothing - of the A550X was even considered as being useful for the Toyota project. Great book. Japanese magazines such as Car Graphic, Nostalgic Hero and Old Timer have run many articles over the years which interviewed leading protagonists and put a lot of stories straight. Of course, being in the Japanese language these articles are not as accessible as they would be in English, but nevertheless the truth exists. These are Japanese cars we are talking about here and the long, tall and short of it is that the *best truth* about them comes from the Japanese people involved and in the Japanese language.

No disrespect intended, but those two projects had nothing to do with each other. No direct connection. Nil. I haven't seen any of the 'fun facts' segments, but if any connection between the Yamaha-produced Nissan project and the Toyota 2000GT was implied - let alone between the Yamaha Nissan project and what became the Nissan S30-series Z - then it's wrong. I know people want to stitch these things together styling-wise, but it's wrong. There's not a single line, a single curve, a single dimension or mechanical detail that directly joins any of the, actually *three*, projects. If they were three-box sedan cars nobody would bother drawing a link, but because they are three two-seater GT cars it's 'no smoke without fire' and all that...

First of all, there's so much wrong in the "2000GT was going to be the 240Z, but was rejected" thing that I won't even bother going there (too long a story...), but you're missing a big point about the MF10 Toyota 2000GT and that's the fact that it is a great car. A great car styling wise, and a great car dynamically. Have you ever driven one? I have, and I was amazed by how good it was at being a proper Grand Touring car in the traditional - 1960s - sense. It made, for example, an Aston Martin DB6 feel like I was driving a lorry... The Toyota was a car out of time really. Too early to capture the kind of Japanese buyers who would have the money to buy one (they would be the 'Bubble Economy' young professionals of the late 1980s) and too bespoke in build to make any real sense in the export market. But they were GREAT cars. And I say that as a Nissan fan. I see your main judgement of the PS30 and PS30-SB is via engine power figures. This completely misses the point. Especially so where the PS30-SB is concerned.

LOL. Vendor is a friend of mine. He and his friends have a lot of interesting stuff floating around in their orbit. This one was picked over some years back and is just being sold (read the full description) to get it out of the way. The price it's up for is reasonable for the (amazingly) decent rear arch sections and a couple of other bits. Nobody is expecting it to get revived or restored, and it's already lost it's chassis number and paper identity so is essentially an 'object'...

Your servant, Sir! The first such valance ('front apron') was 62600-E7201, superseded by 62600-N3301 and others (they made them through 1978) and they were specifically for the UK and 'European' models that were equipped with the corresponding 98300-E8100 front spoiler - part of the 'Euro' road package which included a rear spoiler and specific springs/dampers. The front spoiler was made from an expanded polyurethane material which was relatively flexible. It had steel tabs moulded into it which lined up with the captive nuts in the front apron and lower corner pieces, and unfortunately those tabs eventually tended to rust and 'blow' out of the polyurethane. Lots of spoilers ended up being thrown away because of this... If such a valance/apron turned up in the USA it could well be the result of a simple part-ordering mistake.

It's actually part of a sophisticated international plot to make people put their fender mirrors in the *wrong place*, as revenge for them choosing *The Wrong Mirrors*... Don't tell anyone though.

They probably would have given it the 'R' grade for the cage, let alone anything else. I think it's on repro 7j rally mags (as you spotted) and has some kind of suspension kit on it too. Apparently it has some rust and possibly some evidence of previous accident damage. Radiator core support and left inner wing reported as needing attention. I'm sure it will change hands and get properly fixed at some point...

Noted in Japanese club information as having quite a few late, non-standard modifications from several years back, including that 'dash dodger' cage and the black (composite?) bonnet. Car was reportedly owned in Toyota City, Aichi area. The modifications probably put a few potential buyers off.

People buying from the bottom of the market, not inspecting the cars themselves IN PERSON, not knowing anything about what they are buying, employing other people who don't know what they are looking at.... guess what happens? The guy in question bought a 45+ year old modified car from a small, back street dealer in Sapporo, Hokkaido without having it properly inspected. That's the same Sapporo which hosted the winter olympics in 1972. It just reminds me of those interviews with surfers who have had narrow escapes from becoming shark food. Maybe somebody should ask the sharks what their take on the situation was...?

It will have accounted for some of it, but the main reason we can't follow it all in a linear fashion is that L24 engine blocks had one set of serial numbers but the cars they were fitted to had their own sets of serial numbers. So HS30-prefixed Zs and HLS30-prefixed Zs made from 1969 through 1973 had separate runs of body serial numbers, but shared one sequence of engine serial numbers...