1972 z432 £159,000

[Albrecht]

Getting back on topic though, was the S much worse than the L at fuel economy vs power output or was it just the image that killed it off?

More like the zeitgeist that killed it off really. Fuel injection was being phased in on most models (including the L-gatas, which already had an injected L6 in the top spec domestic Cedrics and Glorias by 1973) and the aforementioned emissions standards creep was making things much more difficult. I can't imagine there was any desire among the Murayama faction to see their lovely blue-blooded S20 watered down or smothered, but with the 'Oil Shock' hitting hard it really had no place on a Nissan showroom floor anymore, and therefore no race future. It couldn't be bumped up in capacity properly without a complete re-design (bore spacing too close, deck too short) and the writing was on the wall for a 'performance' 2 litre six banger.

What happened - effectively - was that the FJ later took over the S20's mantle. It came from the same stable, so to speak. Later, the RB combined the legacies of the L-gata and the GR8/S20 bloodlines.

Also how many S engines were built in total? I imagine it can't have been that many at all given the exclusivity of the models it was put in.

Around 2,600 or so 'standard' production S20 engines were built. A couple of hundred more for development/race use.

The S20 was quite a complex engine for its time, market sector and country of origin. The design was more akin to a race engine (being derived from the race-only GR8) and each unit was effectively blueprinted and hand built. When you work on one you can easily see the difference in quality/purity of engineering, materials and finishes in comparison with the L6s. This should be no surprise, really.

I'm a huge L6 fan (wouldn't be without one) but the S20 is a lovely thing to work on and to own.

 

[Albrecht]

Guys wait until Alan writes his book.

That'll be a long wait...

 

[SeanDezart]

Well, numbers on Wikipedia suggests around 2700, but then it's Wikipedia so how accurate that is I don't know! If that's roughly correct then that's not many at all.

Does that not impress you when most people think it was only on the handful of Zs and 'some' special, Skylines that never saw the official export market ?

These (as has been 'officially' stated) were effectively blue-printed, hand-built engines capable of +250bhp if the 'count' is good.

Amazing.

 

[morbias]

Am I correct in thinking you own two S20 engines, one in a KPGC10 and the other in your Z432R replica? How is that going by the way, is it finished yet?

And you really should write a book, you could collate your forum posts and probably be most of the way there

 

[morbias]

Does that not impress you when most people think it was only on the handful of Zs and 'some' special, Skylines that never saw the official export market ?

These (as has been 'officially' stated) were effectively blue-printed, hand-built engines capable of +250bhp if the 'count' is good.

Amazing.

I see what you did there lol

In the grand scheme of things I think less than 3000 units is a very limited number, if you break that down into days of production that number would possibly be exhausted in a matter of weeks. Also I would expect most of those engines to stay with the vehicle they were originally fitted to so I wonder how many are still out there, and how many are floating around without an engine bay to sit in.

Come to think of it, are there any figures for how long it took to build each vehicle and how many were produced a week?

 

[SeanDezart]

In the grand scheme of things I think less than 3000 units is a very limited number, if you break that down into days of production that number would possibly be exhausted in a matter of weeks.

2x handbuilt engines a week. Whilst casting and assembling hundreds of L-gatas - yes, the comparison can be seen negatively but how many did their domestic competition produce ?

 

[morbias]

2x handbuilt engines a week. Whilst casting and assembling hundreds of L-gatas - yes, the comparison can be seen negatively but how many did their domestic competition produce ?

I was looking more at assembly time for the vehicles themselves, but is that really how many S engines they built a week? That's crazy, I'd sort of expected them to have a well-sized dedicated team turning them out at a faster rate than that!

Wait... that can't be right, that would mean they could only build 104 a year!

 

[Albrecht]

In the grand scheme of things I think less than 3000 units is a very limited number, if you break that down into days of production that number would possibly be exhausted in a matter of weeks.

........................................................

Come to think of it, are there any figures for how long it took to build each vehicle and how many were produced a week?

This discussion is starting to get a bit abstract, and straying into some strange comparisons.

That 'less than 3000 engines' total lasted them the best part of 5 years through the PGC10, KPGC10, PS30, PS30-SB and KPGC110 production models. I don't know where the extrapolation of "two handbuilt engines a week" comes from (I think Sean's taking that a bit too literally), but that's not how they were built and that's not how they were installed either.

We are effectively comparing bespoke Savile Row suits with off the peg stuff from Primark here. They are not really in direct competition with each other, and are conceived, manufactured, sold (and worn) for different reasons and at completely different price points.

I sometimes read/hear people saying that the 432 was some kind of "failure" (guess where they usually come from...?), as though Nissan's expectation was to sell hundreds of thousands of them. Of course they didn't. All the S20-engined cars were limited production homologation specials, produced mainly to legalise them for domestic racing and to sit at the top of the Z and Skyline ranges as 'halo' models reflecting a certain glamour on their cheaper alternatives.

A comparison I sometimes draw for the PGC10 and KPGC10 Skyline GT-Rs is with the Mk.1 Lotus Cortina. I believe over 1 million Mk.1 Ford Cortinas of all variants were made, but less than 3,000 were the twin cam Lotus variants produced between 1963 and 1966. So that's actually a much smaller percentile of total production than the GT-R models in the C10 Skyline range.

Luckily for Ford fans, out of less than 3,000 Mk.1 Lotus Cortinas produced more than 5,000 have actually survived...

 

[Albrecht]

2x handbuilt engines a week. Whilst casting and assembling hundreds of L-gatas...

That's the Savile Row vs Primark comparison though.

S20 engines were effectively blueprinted and hand-assembled, but even I could do more than a couple a week. There wasn't a dedicated team working on them 8/5 let alone 24/7, and engines were built up in batches to suit production of cars according to sales orders. Component parts came in from other Nissan plants, subsidiaries and independent suppliers, and the 'blueprinting' was really limited to sizing/grading block, mains caps and cross-bolt shims, crank, rods, pistons, cams and valvetrain. All the rest - pretty much - was bolt-on stuff. It was hand-assembled because there was no plan or necessity to mechanise it in the way that the exponentially greater quantities of L-gata engines required.

Putting actual cars together would not take that much longer with an S20 engined spec in comparison to an L-gata engined spec. The engines - like most of the bolt-on components - were assembled as units in other Nissan factories and, in the case of the S30-series Z, the Nissan Shatai factory at Hiratsuka made the bodies and assembled all the supplied 'kit' componentry onto them. Engine/trans were installed from underneath, ready bolted to the engine crossmember and front suspension/steering assembly. Different in detail between S20 and L20/24 etc, but I doubt there was all that much assembly time difference on the Hiratsuka line.

432-R was a different matter...

 

[morbias]

This discussion is starting to get a bit abstract, and straying into some strange comparisons.

That 'less than 3000 engines' total lasted them the best part of 5 years through the PGC10, KPGC10, PS30, PS30-SB and KPGC110 production models. I don't know where the extrapolation of "two handbuilt engines a week" comes from (I think Sean's taking that a bit too literally), but that's not how they were built and that's not how they were installed either.

We are effectively comparing bespoke Savile Row suits with off the peg stuff from Primark here. They are not really in direct competition with each other, and are conceived, manufactured, sold (and worn) for different reasons and at completely different price points.

I sometimes read/hear people saying that the 432 was some kind of "failure" (guess where they usually come from...?), as though Nissan's expectation was to sell hundreds of thousands of them. Of course they didn't. All the S20-engined cars were limited production homologation specials, produced mainly to legalise them for domestic racing and to sit at the top of the Z and Skyline ranges as 'halo' models reflecting a certain glamour on their cheaper alternatives.

I'm not at all suggesting the cars that received the S20 were built back to back, simply that putting them into such a context serves to show the rarity when compared to total production numbers!

A comparison I sometimes draw for the PGC10 and KPGC10 Skyline GT-Rs is with the Mk.1 Lotus Cortina. I believe over 1 million Mk.1 Ford Cortinas of all variants were made, but less than 3,000 were the twin cam Lotus variants produced between 1963 and 1966. So that's actually a much smaller percentile of total production than the GT-R models in the C10 Skyline range.

Luckily for Ford fans, out of less than 3,000 Mk.1 Lotus Cortinas produced more than 5,000 have actually survived...

It's similar to the recent discussion on the new Jag e-types and how they fit into the history of the model. While I can understand the reasons for official continuation cars to be built (such as with the AC Cobra), I think they devalue the originals and make them less special in a way.

Replicas (such as your own) I think sit on their own, as they're not built for the purpose of creating a profit, quite the opposite in fact. It's a weird one though; is a car worth more than the sum of its parts or, given the cost of finding such rare parts, is it the opposite?

 

[Rob Gaskin]

....Replicas (such as your own) I think sit on their own..

Creep

 

[morbias]

You can think I'm sucking up if you like Rob!

But there's a world of difference between a car company building official continuations or replicas in order to profit off the top of it (being able to manufacture new pattern parts is a big advantage) and people doing the extensive research and searching for original parts to build their own. One is purely for profit and/or marketing, the other for hobby and interest in the car itself - I would also hold the same opinion of any 'extra' Lotus Cortinas that people put together themselves!

Restoring an old car is difficult enough, building a replica of something rare is way, way above that in my honest opinion.

 

[Alphabettispaghetti]

I'm not a fan of the term replica, I think recreation is more suited. Lots of these recreations are more original than the originals and fetch very very strong money at auctions as some recent p4's/d types have shown.

 

[morbias]

I'm not a fan of the term replica, I think recreation is more suited. Lots of these recreations are more original than the originals and fetch very very strong money at auctions as some recent p4's/d types have shown.

Indeed, the originality of the parts is a huge factor, based on that what do people reckon the Z432 this thread is about is worth, given that certain things aren't as they should be? The wheels for instance - how difficult and costly would it be to find and obtain a set of the correct ones?

I guess the Z432 up for auction in the other thread should be a good indicator, once it sells (or not).

 

[SeanDezart]

I'm not a fan of the term replica, I think recreation is more suited. Lots of these recreations are more original than the originals and fetch very very strong money at auctions as some recent p4's/d types have shown.

I don't like the word 'recreation' makes me think of the council park !

'Tribute' is a more refined term.

 

[MikeB]

I would comment that when you look at other marques limited production "sports purpose" models (eg 911R, Escort RS or the like) that buying one is a complete minefield, and so it appears with these very special Nissans, because the cars have been either modified in period or been subject to a restoration/preservation process. So each original survivor will be almost unique, hence they need to be valued on an individual basis.

An interesting thread, gents, helping to educate the great unwashed, like myself

Sean, in response to your last post, how do you feel about "evocation" ?? Tacky or what?

 

[SeanDezart]

I would comment that when you look at other marques limited production "sports purpose" models (eg 911R, Escort RS or the like) that buying one is a complete minefield, and so it appears with these very special Nissans, because the cars have been either modified in period or been subject to a restoration/preservation process. So each original survivor will be almost unique, hence they need to be valued on an individual basis.
Sean, in response to your last post, how do you feel about "evocation" ?? Tacky or what?

Very good point being unique....can't be translated into Joe Blogg's export S30 value.

Bit Scooby I'd say Mike.....sorry meant Mitsu !