ben240z said:
rally chassis numbers
hi there, this may have been answered before but could I please have a definitive answer as to what the numbers and letters after a rally car define. IE TKS 33 SA 988 cheers ben
The title of the thread involves
"chassis numbers", but you cite
"TKS 33 SA 988" as an example - which is actually a registration plate number ( nothing to do with the chassis number ).
The
chassis numbers given to the Works 240Z & 260Z rally cars were normal sequential production-line chassis numbers ( HS30, HLS30, RS30 & RLS30 prefixes ) and do not contain any 'secret' codes or other information. For example, 'HS30-00023' could have been a normal standard production car, but 'HS30-00024' was a Works rally car. The only link between them being the fact that '24' was slipped onto the production line process just after '23'.....
As regards to the Japanese registration number plates seen on the Works rally cars, these were known as 'Carnet' numbers ( after the French word ) and were actually 'translations' of the original Japanese number plates which were made for temporary export use.
Translation of the plates is quite simple. 'TKS' is a literal translation of the Japanese 'kanji' ideograms that are used for the Shinagawa vehicle licensing district of Tokyo. The two original 'kanji' characters ( 'shina' and 'kawa' ) were translated for the carnet plates as 'TK' ( denoting Tokyo ) and 'S' ( denoting Shinagawa ). Most of the the Works 240Z and 260Z rally cars were first road registered in the Shinagawa ward of Tokyo because it was the closest to Nissan's head offices in the Ginza district of Tokyo, and Nissan's competition engine building workshops at Omori, Tokyo ( which comes under the Shinagawa ward office ).
The two numbers following the registration district ( '33' in your cited case ) simply indicate the taxation code that the vehicle falls into. To cut a long story short, '33' used to be used for passenger cars of over 2-litre capacity.
The 'SA' ( in the example you cite ) is simply a translation into Roman letters of the Japanese 'Hiragana' ( simplified Kanji ) syllable that is seen before the Arabic numbers of the Japanese plates ( '988' in your cited example, which obviously can be read outside Japan and therefore needed no translation ). The 'SA' syllable ( pronounced 'sar' ) is the first syllable in a sequence in the Japanese 'Hiragana' alphabet. It is followed by 'SI', 'SU', and 'SE' on Japanese numberplates, and each syllable can have 9999 different numbers after it.
So 'TKS 33 SA 988' would have been a '33' taxation class vehicle, registered in Tokyo's Shinagawa ward, and was the 988th car to use the 'SA' prefix.
Of course, the carnet plates were translated because it was expected ( rightly ) that most foreign authorities would not be able to read the Japanese Kanji and Hiragana characters on the originals.
Hope that helps.........
As an example to illustrate, here's a pic I took of an original 'carnet' plate on the 1971 Safari Rally winning 240Z in Nissan's collection in Japan: