Life was perking up at Nissan Motors in the Sixties. Before leaving Nissan in 1965, Albrecht Goertz, father of the BMW 507, designed tidy, modern bodywork for a new line of 510 sedans with all-independent suspension and overhead cam engines, bargain competition for the BMW 1600. After Nissan rejected a Goertz design that became the exotic, Yamaha-powered Toyota 2000GT, Yoshihiko Matsuo took over Nissan's GT car project, and his design department at first produced sketches for roadsters and notchback coupes that would use a 2 liter version of Nissan's new overhead cam four. In March of 1967, an interim car with the new engine in the old live-axle Fairlady 2-seat roadster chassis would be introduced, and would score racing success Stateside in the SCCA.
With the success of that car in mind, Nissan management wanted a new car using the 4-wheel independent suspension of the Goertz-designed 510 sedans that would make their US debut in 1968, and using the 2 liter four that had succeeded on the track and in the showroom. The 2-liter car also had more sales potential in Japan, where taxes increased on engines over that size. Meanwhile, cautious Nissan management had requested more rectangular schemes based on the two-box 510 design, but Matsuo's Plan A, which involved curves, fastbacks and a notable absence of decoration, won out in the end.
By 1967, Matsuo's team had produced a fiberglass-bodied prototype at 1 to 1 scale. Despite the divergent views on the appropriate engine, room had been made for an inline six, and the form of the final car was largely set. Note that the crease where the flanks turn inwards toward the sills had moved upwards from the early roadster sketch, and now connects the wheel arches. Meanwhile, the engineering staff had decided to offer a 2.4 liter SOHC six that was based on the S16 four, along with all-independent suspension of the 510, with disc brakes at the front, and drums at the rear.
Changes from that prototype to the production car include the lower greenhouse, more angled B-pillar, increased arc to the rear fender reflected in the shape of the rear side windows, and replacement of C-pillar vents by the 240Z insignia, at least on cars destined for the US market, where West Coast Nissan chief Yutaka Katayama had nixed the Fairlady nameplate.
Other features of what collectors now call the Series 1 car include the twin vents at the base of the backlight. These disappeared on cars made after mid-1971, and the 240Z emblem on the C-pillar was changed to a Z. In Japan, a 2 liter version of the Nissan inline 6 was also available, to avoid the higher taxes on engines above this size. As with the E-Type Jaguar, with which the Z is sometimes compared as it offered performance and sex appeal at what seemed a bargain price, Series 1 cars are more prized by collectors than later versions. And as with the E-Type, the first few hundred cars are the most highly prized, as well as being harder to restore because of scarce components that were soon changed on "real" production cars. One of those real production cars is shown below; it showed up at a Classics & Coffee event in Boulder, CO last month. Prices of good examples like this 1970 to early '71 model have increased of late. Slightly extended bumpers arrived in 1973, with beefier bumpers for the 260Z in 1974, and increased stroke yielding 2.6 liters.
The rear view of this car shows the twin functional air vents in the hatch below the backlight, a sign that this is a Series 1 car produced prior to mid-1971...
From autumn of 1971, Nissan offered the Fairlady ZG on their home market, featuring an extended "aero-dyna" nose with air intake below the bumper and riveted fender extensions in fiberglass, and contoured plastic headlight shrouds. With the same 2.4 liter engine as the standard car, top speed went up to 130 mph. Stateside, the plan was to offer the fiberglass ZG nose as a dealer-installed assembly, in order to legalize it for SCCA competition.
But, as a result of the merger between Nissan and Prince Motors in 1966, there was an even more performance-oriented Z available. This was the Z432, using the completely different 2 liter inline 6 with twin overhead cams designed by Prince. It was a pioneering engine, as it was the first production power plant offered with 4 valves per cylinder (at least, since the Stutz DV32 and Duesenberg J in the Thirties). Around 420 were produced, and the Z432 proved to be successful track competition for the Toyota 2000GT with its twin-cam six. A few were actually used by the police in Japan.
Postscript & Errata:
We corrected the year of the yellow Z after encountering it at a later show; it's a Series 1 car from 1970 to mid-'71. It seemed unfair after posting Plan A that we never showed readers Plan B. Here's one model from Matsuo's team:
*Footnote:
Nissan's sports and specialty cars have featured in this blog before, in "Whatever Happened to Nissans Bodied by Zagato?", posted September 25, 2016, and in "Mass-Produced Customs----Nissan Pike Cars: Pao, S-Cargo, BE-1 & Figaro", posted September 12, 2017.
Photo Credits:
Top thru 3rd: Nissan Motors, on zhome.com
2nd: pinterest.com
3rd: rmsothebys.com
4th & 5th: Motostalgia Auctions, on carstylecritic blog
6th: Matt Kennan
7th: the author
8th: Wikimedia
9th: netcarshow.com
10th: Wikimedia
11th: Nissan Motors, on zhome.com
12th & bottom: Wikimedia
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