Fame at last!!!!! Classic & Sports Car magazine.

I'm very interested to read all the comments about the Classic & Sports Car article - having been a C&S subscriber for many years, there is ample opportunity for someone knowledgeable to write to the "letters" column of the mag. to put the record straight, it seems to happen every month after an article has appeared and usually throws up some interesting replies.

In passing, I'm the owner of 240Z, AYA 162K on which the recent Oxford Diecast model was based - I believe the original was on your stand at the NEC a couple of years ago?
 
Purchased a copy today and IMHO it is one of the better articles written in quite a while.
When you compare the content with what is normally spewed out it is quite enlightening ( which no doubt a lot of it is from Albrecht influence) especially when compared to the historic content of most previous car magazines
Again IMHO it is an excellent article aimed at making good easy reading for the Magazine's general subscribers and not aimed specifically at the Z aficionado.
 
In my opinion, it speaks poorly of previous and current articles if this is the 'best and most accurate'.

Journalists always have time and the means to produce a great article, however they are under pressure to best manage thier resources and it's the better end of the classic car world (ex auction houses mentioned) that receive them.
S30s have stepped up from banger-racing, cheap 'tuning' and only a small, inward-looking club-scene to become to be accepted but still a long way to go it appears.

Why doesn't THE CLUB internally produce an information sheet for each model and what reguler contact does The Club have with the press ?

Surely depending upon one private indivudual who isn't even a paid-up member is at best hit and miss and at worst, doesn't represent the UK Z scene at all.

"Look around and say what you can do for your club/car......"
 
Hmm, if only there was a paid up member who has averaged one post every 8 hours for the past 13 years!
If such a person exists then maybe they could impart some of their wisdom on an article about the cars.
:D :p
 
I agree with Steve Burns on this.

If you want to gain really in-depth knowledge of the Z range you wouldn't expect to find it in Classic and Sports Car mag. They have to appeal to a wider audience to sell enough to be profitable.
 
supermik said:
Hmm, if only there was a paid up member who has averaged one post every 8 hours for the past 13 years!
If such a person exists then maybe they could impart some of their wisdom on an article about the cars.
:D :p
Click to expand...

There are a few of us that could meet that criteria but we don't know enough about the cars other than our own experiences. I'm sure anything written by such a person would come in for criticism too.
 
Well factually incorrect or not, I quite enjoyed reading the article. It was also nice to see a 280ZX in an article, any article even if it should not be seen by some in the same pages as other Z's. As pointed out at length, the article is incorrect in many ways BUT its the best one Ive seen lately and it did put a few myths to bed. Your cars guys look really good, nice one.
 
So the article erred in creating a lineage that doesn't exist from the A550X to the subsequent S30 and Albrecht von Goertz duly makes his appearance. The way I see it though, like it or not, the crafty Count is part of the backstory to the S30 as Nissan moved from one 2-seater coupe project into another one with a new team. Even through continual (incorrect) association between Goertz and S30 he is part of the story that has to be told, even if only to debunk him.
 
Ah, the old no smoke without fire argument.....

Don't debunk him - merely don't mention him - I don't see the logic.

Might as well mention him every time there is an article on 911s 'as he did a stint there' !
 
bluejon said:
So the article erred in creating a lineage that doesn't exist from the A550X to the subsequent S30 and Albrecht von Goertz duly makes his appearance. The way I see it though, like it or not, the crafty Count is part of the backstory to the S30 as Nissan moved from one 2-seater coupe project into another one with a new team.
Click to expand...

Which "2-seater coupe project" are you referring to though? A550X? Nissan 2000GT? B380X? CSP311? There were several others on the go too.

The problem with the linking of the A550X & Goertz to the 'Maru Z' team's S30 is that it makes a connection in the mind of the reader that's hard to shake off. Mention of Goertz - even if, as you say, it is to debunk the myth - serves to reinforce the association of his name with the S30. What bugs me most about that is that it namechecks somebody who had NOTHING to do with the car whilst the names of the many who DID have a hand in the car usually get no mention.

Somebody, sometime has to write an article like this with NO mention of Goertz and FULL mention of the people who actually styled, engineered and produced the car. How hard can it be? In this article's case I tried to dissuade the writer from mentioning the A550X and Goertz, but to no avail.

Having said that, you should have seen some of the other stuff that might have made it to print if it hadn't been corrected...
 
Absolutely not. The smoke/fire analogy implies a relationship. My contention is merely that the goertz-S30 association exists in so many places online and offline that in itself that has become part of the story. Those incorrect pages in history cannot be overlooked ... unless you have powers akin to an authoritarian state to remove them online and seek-n-destroy them in print. Even this thread is guilty of being part of making that association, QED.
 
SeanDezart said:
Might as well mention him every time there is an article on 911s 'as he did a stint there' !
Click to expand...

For anybody that doesn't know, this appears to have been another one of his little white lies. Goertz claimed to have had design/styling input on what became the Porsche 911, but in fact this consisted of Goertz sending unsolicited 'ideas' to Porsche.

Anybody can play that game. I'm still waiting for my royalty on the design of the Ferrari F40, which I drew up for them during one of Mr Mott's Physics lessons when I was in 5C, in 1975.
 
bluejon said:
Even this thread is guilty of being part of making that association, QED.
Click to expand...

This is true of course, and it's one of the reasons that I get perhaps a little shouty about Goertz whenever his name comes up. Hopefully - with modern technology - the negative side of the link might start to stand a chance. Kind of like an anti-venom...?

I was once threatened with legal action for giving a negative opinion on Goertz that was printed and published without my permission. That's the kind of thing we are up against here.
 
Albrecht said:
Somebody, sometime has to write an article like this with NO mention of Goertz and FULL mention of the people who actually styled, engineered and produced the car. How hard can it be? In this article's case I tried to dissuade the writer from mentioning the A550X and Goertz, but to no avail.

Having said that, you should have seen some of the other stuff that might have made it to print if it hadn't been corrected...
Click to expand...

The whole issue reminds me so much of when going to the doctors and him saying you need to change your habits namely this, this ,this and this etc., etc.
And my reply to him was it is impossible for me to change this 100% at one time, but I might be able to change things by 1% each time and If I could attempt to do this 100 times I would have a far greater chance of success

Over the years the Goertz mythe has almost gone and the truer story has begun to emerge.Thanks mainly from yourself attempting to re-educate people with the information that you have sourced from Japan

You will never get the whole thing out to your satisfaction in the western world press but if just get a small improvement on each article to me that is a success
 
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Albrecht said:
For anybody that doesn't know, this appears to have been another one of his little white lies. Goertz claimed to have had design/styling input on what became the Porsche 911, but in fact this consisted of Goertz sending unsolicited 'ideas' to Porsche.

Anybody can play that game. I'm still waiting for my royalty on the design of the Ferrari F40, which I drew up for them during one of Mr Mott's Physics lessons when I was in 5C, in 1975.
Click to expand...
Said with not a small lump of langue de beouf in my cheek.....;)

He does seem to have been rather frustrated at having only 'conceived/designed' commercial failures and therefore 'latched' on the propbably the two best known if not selling sports-cars* of the period. Given more time he'd have claimed input on the MX-5 too.

* albeit strictly a (911) 2+2 is a GT and not a true sports-car :devil:
 
just bought the mag and had a read. I fully accept that erroneous details can really irk those with real knowledge, but let's not blind ourselves to the overall impression of the cars given by the article and how the article will be viewed by the public at large. I thought the whole piece was extremely complimentary to the Zs and the 260 in particular. It would make anyone reading it covet one and I was left feeling really proud that I actually own one of these beautiful cars. Articles such as this can only serve to raise the profile of the Z in a positive way and in doing so raise their value. So by pointing our gun at the writer we must be careful not to shoot ourselves in the foot in the process. This does not mean, however, that I do not value the knowledge of members such as Albrecht who remain the true guardians of the car's history and who will be there long after the journalists have lost interest.
Just a footnote: Really love the look of that Fiberfab Jamaican on page 164. Never even heard of one before!
 
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