Ahaa...Frank! Gotcha! Which button did I push; the ivy or the league!?! I'ld love to spend some time with you! Pardon my hasty acceptance! I'll bet Connecticut is beautiful right now. We're having a tropical at the moment. Are you planning to go to the convention in San Antonio? I don't think we've met but I sure HAVE heard all about you from Beck.

I do want to comment about some things you wrote concerning #16. Perhaps 22 October 1969 was the date of a pre-order? It is entirely possible as Nissan introduced the new car to the press in Ginza on October 18th. However no actual cars that were for sale to the public in North America arrived until January 1970. There is no possible way that #16 was 'sold' prior to January. And the 7,000 cars that came to the USA were HLS30U, HLS30UN, and HLS30UV (HLS30V) models. So, you see, all those designation numbers are important because they explain a lot of peculiarities we find in the North American early Zs. If #13 was delivered in Virginia, it was probably imported into Newark or Jacksonville. #26 was imported into Jacksonville. #27 went to Newark. Don't ya just love trivia?

I appologize for my initial skepticism, however please understand that I hear stories all the time. I got broadsided yesterday as a matter of fact. Evidently Z-brothers have a long sense of humor! However, this is a great find and has been a great deal of fun to discuss and I'll thank you and your club for putting this on the table. Thanks Clive also.

Chris

_________________
Her Majesty the 26th HLS30U-00026
Princess Ziesta HLS30U-00027
Enjoy the Ride

Chris ~

Thanks for that!

YES!! I love Z car trivia, because none of it is 'unimportant'. The CTZCC has Bob Sharp as our Executive Advisor and we could sit and listen for hours to him reminisce about the very first cars. He remembers names we never heard of in the Datsun History books, and tells us inside stories about how things actually came about back in the day. The stories about Sharp, Fitzgerald, Posey, Brock, Morton, T. Cruise, P. Newman, Bedini, etc etc never bore me. Every time we think we 'know everything' about these carz, someone pops up with further information!

Hey ~ we would love to meet you, too. We are scheduled to hold our Second Annual Club Z Car Show next month, then our Annual Fall Outing picnic in October (which marks the 40th anniversary of these cars). Is there any chance you could slide up here and party a bit with us? We have a loyal member in Georgia who trailers his beautiful Z up here for both events, and we would like to get Jim Frederick and Carl Beck up here this year, and John Taddonio from Rochester NY if we can. You could have some fun and zee a bunch of really nice carz.

I want to someday zee both your cars, and I have to openly confess my favorite color scheme for the early Series-1 cars was green with beige interior. Your wheels are the ONLY ones which belong on the old 240Z!

I don't even know you, and I'm already jealous!!

We need to discuss you joining us! We're free, we're friendly, and we're the most fun you can have with your clothes on. Don't take my word for it ~ ask any member of this Club.

Frank T
MbrshpDir/CTZCC
Apr/70 240Z
#02807

To your second to last post Frank: Amen brother!

I hope the folks from the classic z car forum come on over. Everyone loves a good debate and maybe we'll learn a thing or two. We are a very welcoming club. But as you said, the conversation needs to be respectful all around. We already have enough politics and stress outside of this club!

Ross

_________________
Ross Williams
1978 280Z Black Pearl Edition 36k Original Miles
2008 350Z Bob Sharp GT-33 Edition

Hi Chris:
You must be holding out on us - - Sounds like you have a list of all the important individual peculiarities between/among all those sub model, service designations for 1970, would you mind sharing it with us?

I've poured over my Field Service Manuals in the past, as well as the Parts Catalogs and New Model Introduction Bulletins - - and I can't really find anything specific and/or significant noted within the manuals that would tell me exactly what all the peculiarities you reference - are. Per your comment there must be several and you must have found them somewhere?

For example - the 1970 Factory Service Manuals {both the individual and combined editions} lists HLS30-U as: a Left Hand Drive model for USA and Canada, with SU's and F4W71A - 4

HLS30-UV Doesn't show up on anything I have - until the 1972 Model Year - and even then I can't find anything specifically pointed out though out the manual.

HLS30-UN Doesn't show up in my manuals until the 1973 Model Year.

BTW -I think we should note - just so we don't give the wrong impression to anyone following - none of the service model designations would be found anywhere on the car itself. So no need to try to find a "U" on #13 anywhere...

FWIW,
Carl B.

Hello everyone at ctzcc.com, Alan T. from London, England, United Kingdom here. Another visitor from the classiczcars.com forum, motivated to sign up here because of this 'HLS30-00013' thread, and some of the comments in it.

I'd like to thank Frank T. for a very welcoming PM when I signed up. Thanks Frank! And Ross, I shall certainly make every effort to be polite and respectful.

26th-Z has neatly ( and very politely I think ) laid to rest the story that 'HLS30-00016' was originally "sold" on 22nd October 1969. I suspect I would probably not have managed to be so polite. That date even made it as far as The History Channel's documentary on "Datsun Z Car History", which just goes to prove that if this kind of nonsense gets repeated often enough it DOES take on a life of its own and becomes almost impossible to refute......

I'm afraid that the quote about 'HLS30-00016' being the "...first Z car sold to the public" is also quite a tall story. I think it would be very difficult to prove that a Japanese customer, buying a car in Japan was not the first member of the public to buy an S30-series Z car when the new S30-series Z range debuted at the Tokyo Motor Show on 24th October 1969. As 26th-Z pointed out, the new models ( including an HLS30U ) were first shown to the press on 18th October at Nissan's head office in Ginza, Tokyo. The press were not allowed to actually test drive any of these cars in Japan until 5th November 1969, so the claims of an October 22nd new car 'sale' in the USA seem pretty far fetched.

This may well be seen as "nit picking" over "trivia" by some, but I think such details are very much worth getting right. I don't know of any other car enthusiast groups that would happily accept misinformation and incorrect historical data about their chosen marques and models in the same way that I often see S30-series Z enthusiasts do. With tools such as the internet - and forums such as this - at our disposal, it seems to me that we have the opportunity to get a few things a little more 'right' than we have done up to now......

Cheers,
Alan T.

Carl,
I do hope that whatever it was that you "poured" over your FSMs PCs and NMIBs will not damage them too much. You might like to dry dabbing them gently with a moistened sponge.....

Might I suggest - perhaps stating the obvious - that you could well be looking for Nissan's internal 'Katshiki' suffixes in the wrong place? They were, of course, primarily for use internally - and by the time the north American market cars got to north America the suffixes were no longer strictly relevant. The individual cars would - I should imagine - have been destination-designated even before they were put on the boat. In that case, I doubt that NMC USA would have needed to know them - let alone use them in any practical way.

But like Chris, I believe it is extremely important for us 'civilians' to try to understand the codes and what they signify. In my case, this has meant trying to research the differences between an S30S and an S30SF, S30A, S30SA, S30D, S30DC, S30CN, PS30D, PS30N or PS30SB etc etc. I also needed to get my head around the differences between an HS30-H and an 'ordinary' HS30S, HS30SA, HS30A or indeed an HS30HA......

The point is of course that these are all Japanese cars that were are talking about here. Unless you look to Japan - to the place where the cars were originally conceived, designed, engineered and produced - you are always going to be on the back foot when it comes to finding out the truth about them. Much of the data that we seek lies with Japanese documentation in the Japanese language,held in Japanese hands.

I believe that half the battle is in realising that these 'Katashiki' codes actually existed. Once you acknowledge the fact that they exist, then you can go looking for what they actually signified at any one time. In my experience they are something of a moving target, and we don't actually have a Rosetta Stone-type of source to aid us in 'breaking' the codes.

If you convince yourself that what you have is "...an American car..." then there's only a certain level of understanding that you will ever reach, I'm afraid.


Alan T.

I would like to welcome both Chris and Alan to our discussion forum! It's great to have you here. Now I would like to add my two cents to the debate: It seems like there are some details floating around in these discussions that no one will ever know definitively - like the exact sequence of events that occurred between a car's arrival in the U.S. and the time that the lucky first owner drove it off the lot. Unless we have first hand knowledge or a concrete paper trail, to debate that time period seems futile. Another example is to debate what was in minds of the executvies and others at Nissan when they designed, marketed and distributed the Z car. A good hobby always has some mysteries. Ross

_________________
Ross Williams
1978 280Z Black Pearl Edition 36k Original Miles
2008 350Z Bob Sharp GT-33 Edition

Hey Carl,

Service Bulletin volume 125, May 1970, 'Introduction of Datsun 240Z Sports Model S30 Series'. The HLS30U was the basic North American export model. It had the air pump emissions equipment. The HLS30UN did not and went to Canada except Ontario which got the HLS30U. The HLS30UV, or sometimes simply described as HLS30V had evaporative emissions equipment. Remember how we used to dicsuss how the early cars didn't have the fuel vapor recovery tank? HLS30U. There is no distinction in the bulletin that only California got the evaporative equipment like we had thought in the past. As you point out, the 'U', 'N' and 'V' don't show up in anything other than the paperwork. And it appears as though the VINs did not distinguish between the emission equipped and non-emission equipped cars. Something for us to hash over breakfast next Sunday!

Another thing you mention, Carl, is the fitment of SU carburetors. The S30 was fitted with Hitachi carburetors, not Skinners Union. In particular, the HLS30U series was fitted with HJG46 carburetors. I believe the S30 models fitted with the L20A engine had HJG38s.

In October 1969, Datsun USA was conducting a road test program we refer to as the Canada test. Hitoshi Uemura and Eiji Osawa drove two pre-production S30s from L.A. to New Orleans and back begining in mid October. It is entirely possible that they stopped at a Texas dealership during their travel and someone from the dealership ordered a car. Otherwise, I can come up with no explanation for the conversation about #16. There simply weren't any cars in North America to buy.

All for the love of the sport. Peace.

Chris

_________________
Her Majesty the 26th HLS30U-00026
Princess Ziesta HLS30U-00027
Enjoy the Ride

I love this Club!

This is GREAT ~ getting all these new voices in here concerning such a fascinating subject. Welcome to all and THANK YOU for this invaluable input.

The details you guyz are quoting are priceless, please keep it up. I will now have to dig out my Datsun/Nissan history books and quote here what I read there about delivery dates. That will take me time b'cse I'm still playing catch-up on the important stuff I walked away from when I left for a 6 day trip unexpectedly.

But on the face of it, I'm already having trouble picturing Datsun building more than 500 Z cars in Oct/Nov/Dec 1969, then keeping them there in Japan until Jan/70 ~ why wouldn't they have shipped them out to the world???

Keep this great thread rolling, guyz ~ I'm sure we're all learning something new with each Post.

Frank T

Frank,
Please be careful about which 'Datsun/Nissan' history books you use as reference. I'm afraid that most of them contain a lot of mistakes, and have holes in their 'history' that you could drive a fleet of buses through.



For one thing, they needed to make enough cars to fill up their designated space on a roll-on roll-off car transporter ship. Nissan's ships had fixed schedules of course. The other thing was that a number of niggling problems were discovered on the north American testing project of two pre-production cars ( known internally at Nissan as the 'Kaku U' project ) that 26th-Z mentioned in a previous post. Not least of these was a crankshaft harmonic that would eventually call for a redesign of the L24 crankshaft with different counterweighting. Production of 'Export' spec S30s was apparently halted whilst some of the niggles were being ironed out.

I hope you'll excuse me for 'nit-picking', but 'Datsun' didn't build any of these cars - it was NISSAN. Semantics I know, but an important distinction I think.

You also mention "500 Z cars in Oct/Nov/Dec 1969", when in fact Nissan's records show a figure of 543 'Export' S30-series Z cars built up to the end of 1969, and of course not all of these would have been cars that were to be sold to the general public, and would have included both RHD Export as well as LHD cars that were not built for the north American market. They also show that they built 969 'Domestic' variant cars before the end of 1969, which you don't very see mentioned in the 'history' books, or on sites such as zhome.com.......

Oh, this gets better and better.

Do we have a clear idea of how many Zs were needed to fill a shipment? In other words, how long did Datsun (Nissan) wait before they felt they had enough Zs to justify shipping them overseas?

Quite right ~ I'm aware there were parallel productions of the Fairlady Z and other (non-HLS) models underway as "ours" were being built; forgive me ~ but they don't interest me nearly as much as do the American versions (altho I remain very curious about the Australian versions, since they appear to have received Zeds on an entirely alien schedule).

I have long been aware that Datsun experienced shipping/distribution problems which slowed delivery of their Zs in the first months. I also have read that the Quality Control was so stringent, many many carz were delayed from shipping after being completed, and got sent back into post-production "repair" treatment until they met standards. That would account for some seemingly early-VIN carz which didn't receive build plates (door plates) until much later than their VINs would indicate. We have a perfect example of such a car in our Club. The VIN would indicate early summer 1970, but the build plate shows early 1971. Accordingly, the car is registered as a 1971. (YES ~ I understand there were many other reasons for that happening as well ~ but this car appears to have been returned for better "Widgets" and not released for sale until the job was properly done).

And if Datsun/Nissan did NOT ship any carz until 1970, how did they "experience shipping problems" during 1969?

That would depend on the particular ship being loaded. The first dedicated carriers for the Japan-north American route in 1967 had a capacity of around 1200 cars / light trucks. In April 1970 a couple of new carriers were phased in which had capacities of around 1900. By early 1972 they had ships which could carry over 2500.....

I believe it would be correct to say that - as demand increased unexpectedly through 1970 - the main problem was in actually producing enough cars to keep up with demand, rather than in actually shipping them.



Well I'd like to ask you why you are not so interested in the non-'American' versions ( ) , but I guess that's another thread entirely!

Having said that, I believe that - if you want to understand your 'American' HLS30s properly - you must try to look at all of the cars that were designed and built alongside it. If you don't look at the 'family' picture as a whole, you'll never understand any one of the family members properly.......

And talking about 'HLS30s' as though they were all north American market models is bound to lead to nitpickers like myself telling you that HLS30-prefixed cars ( sharing the same body serial number sequence as north American market cars ) were made for the European market too. So watch out



I think you might need to look to the source of your quote to get the person who made it to explain it fully. But if we take a more open interpretation of "shipping problems", we could include quality control and component re-design holdups as being the kind of Force Majeure that could cause "shipping problems". Especially if there were no finished cars ready to ship......

To my understanding, there was the JDM cars, HS30, right hand drive, which also would end up in Australia. Then the American version, HLS30, left hand drive. Then there was the European version, not shure what that vin code is, but to my assumption, came with a 5-speed, no emmisions. Not shure if there was a UK version as well. What I'd like to know, is if there was a #1 for each model, or did each car produced have there own number? ( I would think each car had there own #) Also to what is said, I can see #16 being the first bought or better yet first registered, until proven other wise. Makes sense to me. The lower #'s could have not got delivered yet, or had to get shipped back, maybe Bob got more thn just #6 or other collectors got them and never registered them, etc.....an so on. IMO, what it all boils down to is......Do you have a 240Z If so, then you should feel on top of the Z world, no matter what the Vin is, or what it looks like. Well, of course, there is the KINGS of the mountain, and it's not me. (p.s., I'll keep it friendly, hope I didn't sound visious, To my understanding, Z people are a very friendly crowd and I just get erked when I have to read negativity about my brothers.) Also, remember to wave to a fellow Z going down the road, if you know them or not, or if the new Z's even reconize an older Z, (I wonder sometimes,) It's tradition in my book. Have a geat Z day, and keep smiling, if it runs or not.

Well, OK. My reference for a lot of what I have "decided to believe" is "DATSUN/NISSAN: A history of the Nissan Motor Corporation in USA, 1960-1980" by John Rea. Don't know the author.

Regarding transport of the early carz, Rea claims "the earliest of the Nissan car carriers (ships) had a capacity of 1900 vehicles; the latest, completed in 1979 and 1980, can transport 5000 Datsuns at a time".

Rea also says: "Datsuns were initially brought into Los Angeles, Newark New Jersey, and Houston". That could account for car #16 arriving (and being sold in TX) sooner than car #13 was, on the East Coast. However, the previous owner of car #13 feels that car was delivered to Virginia (probably the Norfolk/Hampton Roads area), then bought and moved to North Carolina.

Z cars were shipped from Japan to the USA by the Marubeni America Corporation. The 1900-car Marubeni ships replaced the Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, Ltd, who had transported Datsun cars to the USA thru the 1960s. Mitsui ships had 1200-car capacities.

But it's important for me to bear in mind that while I'm focusing on the Z carz, Datsun was shipping many other models at the same time, so the shipping lines and infastructure had been in place for years.

I'm searching for the reference which lists the numbers of cars shipped during each year, and their national distribution. Somewhere I recall seeing that GB only got a total of THREE (3) 240Zs from the 1970 model year. And YES ~ I am a stickler about the "1970 model year" being ONLY from Oct69 to Sep70; Zcars made on/after 01Oct70 were TECHNICALLY 1971 model year cars. Differences were slight and hard to recognize, but those dates are what count when the claim is made that only about 10,000 1970 240Zs were produced.

Many strange marketing ploys were allowed here in the USA during the Fall of 1970, which resulted in many 1971 cars being titled as "1970 240Zs". This only adds to the confusion and debate regarding how many 1970 240Zs there actually are.

Ahhh ~ I've found the source I was searching for.

For 1970, Datsun *SALES* (not production) show "16,215" for the USA. That figure will include those 1971 model year cars which got sold and titled as 1970 cars, on or after 01Oct70.

Canada sold 1,201; Australia sold 319, and GB sold TWO (2). My mistake.

Total *PRODUCTION* figures for the 1970 Zcar were about 10,000; apparently, Datsun wasn't sure if the car was going to sell well!

NOW, if you found the earlier of those two Brit 240Zs in your home town, neatly preserved in a shed and undriven for 30 years, and nobody but the owner knew it was there ~ how would you feel?

THAT's what's happened here, with car#13. It happened to be found in a dinky little backwater town, in this dinky little state, in the middle of what we lovingly refer to as the Rust Belt. People have been searching for it and speculating about it for decades. Most assumed it had been destroyed and crushed and would never surface. Then, one night at a hotrod show, some stranger walks out of the crowd to admire our Zs and casually admits he's got the earliest VIN 240Z ever sold in the USA.

Forgive us if we're a bit excited about that!