Pour les Francophiles....

SeanDezart

Well-Known Forum User
A club member since 2014, who bought this from a Dutch importer in 2015. The family also have an RA28GT.
 

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SeanDezart

Well-Known Forum User
It was written tongue in cheek with Brexit in mind but yes, grammatically more correct perhaps 'phones', merci.
 

SeanDezart

Well-Known Forum User
I am drafting a reply to the mag editor highlighting a few errors, obvious to us but less so to those not in the Z family eg :

Only 1016 examples sold in continental Europe (I guess that excludes the UK)

It was conceived and built to replace the Roadsters (inspired by British sportscars)

Mr K made sure it was a 6cyl and...

...as he was matey with Yoshihiko Matsuo and US Nissan pres, this allowed the pair to ensure the project evolved.

Intention to build began in 1965 (to confirm - not sure about that one)

and so on..............
 

Albrecht

Well-Known Forum User
It was conceived and built to replace the Roadsters (inspired by British sportscars)

Mr K made sure it was a 6cyl and...

...as he was matey with Yoshihiko Matsuo and US Nissan pres, this allowed the pair to ensure the project evolved.

"...conceived and built to replace the Roadsters..." I would have thought that was obvious, no? Or do you mean the "inspired by" part? The Fairlady Roadsters were all inspired by British - amongst other - sports cars.

"Mr K made sure it was a 6cy..." is nonsense. It wasn't his decision to make anyway, but the switch from 'four' to 'six' was part of an overall strategy for Nissan product in Japan which commentators will not begin to understand unless they look at post-Prince merger Nissan, their product line, the product lines of their domestic competitors, and Japan as a whole, in the period concerned. It's all part of the "Thanks Mr K" nonsense which ignores the fact that the Z was always going to be straight six-powered whilst the C10-series Skyline was.

Katayama was President of NMC USA (from 1965 until 1975), replacing Takashi Ishihara. Don't know who he was supposed to have been "matey" with, or how it would have made any great difference other than in marketing matters. Katayama's influence is relentlessly overstated.

All starting with the "240Z" again I see, rather than a family of models at launch.

...plus c'est la même chose...
 

SeanDezart

Well-Known Forum User
"...conceived and built to replace the Roadsters..." I would have thought that was obvious, no? Or do you mean the "inspired by" part? The Fairlady Roadsters were all inspired by British - amongst other - sports cars.

And there was me believing that Nissans' strategy was to sell the SPL, SRL and S30 in parallel - a complete range of sports-cars.

And didn't the SPL 'come out' a year before the MGB ?
 

Albrecht

Well-Known Forum User
And there was me believing that Nissans' strategy was to sell the SPL, SRL and S30 in parallel - a complete range of sports-cars.

Your use of "SPL" and "SRL" is very revealing. I think you (ought to...) mean SP(L)311 and SR(L)311.

Nissan had planned for a few months of crossover in production for late 1969, but the Roadsters were at the end of their sales cycle and would not conform with updated safety legislation. Introduction of the Z pretty much killed demand and Nissan Shatai needed the space. Despite what others might insist, the Z was conceived, designed and produced to replace the Fairladies that came before it. No more Roadsters.

SeanDezart said:
And didn't the SPL 'come out' a year before the MGB ?

SP(L)310 Fairlady did indeed precede the MGB, but since when was the MGB some kind of 'sports car genesis'? Nissan's Roadsters were inspired by the traditional open-topped 'sports' car, a niche which had been typified by spartan British fare since well before the war. The MG T-types/series would be a pretty good example of the type. Nissan themselves cite their DC-3 model of the early 1950s as the beginning of their true 'sports' models.
 
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Albrecht

Well-Known Forum User
Error from Albrecht, the first one ever I think! :D

*ERROR CODE 54: TEA RESERVOIR LOW*

uk66fastback said:
So all this Mr K-This, Mr K-That mainly US stuff, is simply legend/fantasy?

Lets not go too far the other way with the critique. Yutaka Katayama was a seminal figure for Nissan in the USA, and a very interesting man in his own right. However, he was lucky enough to have a fairly charmed early life (including managing to be excused military service) and was related to one of Nissan's founding families, making him almost un-sackable. His education was in economics and business studies and his early career at Nissan was in the advertising field. He was not - as has been claimed - any sort of engineer or designer. Katayama was fairly rare amongst Japanese company staff in being rather vocal and pushy, making use of his elite status to get what he wanted and being fairly political (including strike-breaking and anti-union lobbying), which rubbed a few people up the wrong way. Katayama said he was "banished" to the USA as some kind of punishment and "was expected to fail", but this doesn't stand up to too much scrutiny. First of all, Nissan had already started investing in the setting up of a sales network in the USA (in partnership with Marubeni) before Katayama pitched up there and some of his contemporaries - including the very important figure of Soichi Kawazoe - had been doing some very important ground work before him. Why would Nissan want to F all that up? The truth is that Katayama was pretty much the ideal man at the ideal time, perfectly suited to what he was sent to do and blessed to enjoy a golden time for Japanese exports to Baby Booming USA.

What grates for me is the over-stating of Katayama's role in product planning, engineering, styling and motor sports. It's almost as though nobody could imagine that Japan itself had dreams and aspirations, as though Japan was always going to be some kind of third world nation stuck in the 1930s. All this "made for the USA" stuff, starting with the 510 Bluebird and then being applied to the S30-series Z, ignores the fact that the Japanese people wanted something new as well. Do people honestly believe that the 41o and 411 Bluebirds would never be replaced with something newer, something better? That the SP/SR Roadsters would be the last of Nissan's sports cars and there would be a 2-seater GT-sized gap in Nissan's range? Was Katayama responsible for changing this? Of course not. People just don't look at the bigger picture.

So, great man. But shining the spotlight solely on Katayama leaves a cast of many, many other people in the shadow it casts.
 
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