There are cars that are well remembered. There are cars that are well loved. Those are actually pretty common. What isn’t common is a car that can be singularly named as one that transformed the game. The original Datsun 240Z is one of those cars and its origin story is fascinating. Jason Cammisa takes us through that story here and it is one that’s uniquely Japanese in its path. Born from a failed concept, the first variant of the Z-car was fast, beautiful, strongly built, and most importantly affordable. Suddenly a regular Joe could own a car that looked like an exotic, sounded like a racer, and went like hell down the road and around the corners. The fact that it came from a country that was not at all on the sports car fan radar made it even better.
What’s neat about the Z-car which we never knew is that the original version actually shared an engine with the famed GT-R which hit the Japanese streets at about the same time. In fact, there’s a lot of connectivity in this car that we never realized. How about the fact that the first concept, which Datsun passed on became the lithe Toyota 2000GT?!
If you like the story behind the stories of the automotive world, this short film will definitely spin your crank. Enjoy!
I was in the military when this car came out. You could buy it in Japan for $5,000 (approximately), and pay to have it shipped to the states. In the States you could buy it for between $3,000 and $3,500 (keep it for a while and sell it for more). Datsun (with the backing of the government) was “dumping” them on the USA. A Trans-Am (very much in demand in Japan), cost around $4,000 in 1970, in Japan, it sold for over $10,000 (110% import tax plus shipping). Same was going on with motorcycles.