Albrecht
Well-Known Forum User
I think with this car we have to compare it to the VZ program cars. It seems they're not all the same? Fit and finish not the same. Not 'factory' finished.
Exactly. The 'Z Store' program/'Vintage Z Program' cars were rebuilt in a handful of businesses and not strictly to ex-Factory standard. They apparently mixed and matched major components and didn't have a philosophy of maintaining strict build date accuracy. A number of repro parts were used.
All of which is fine as long as they are understood for what they were and are. Our reference points are the factory-correct details, and the VZ cars are compared to that in order to better understand them.
Generally speaking, the north American 'scene' for these cars exists in its own bubble. Their discussions of rarity and value tend not to take into account anything that's outside that bubble. There are - of course - honourable exceptions, but 99.99% of those people wouldn't include any 'not sold here' variants in their thinking because they are simply not on their radar. The guy talking about the VZ cars as being "the rarest Nissan ever made" wouldn't know what a 432-R was if it ran over him.
Edited to add: I've personally seen THREE 'Vintage Z Program' cars in Japan and they were all beautifully done. A very, very good standard of finish that pretty much anyone would be happy with. Body fit and finish/paintwork in particular was outstanding in my opinion.