Telling someone that you’re into racing, but you run vintage Datsuns is kind of like telling them you’re a pro athlete, but you do logrolling at lumberjack competitions. You get that high-pitched pandering tone back, “Interesting. How did you get into… THAT?” Well, here’s how I became a “Datsun Guy.”
I grew up in Southern California’s San Fernando valley. In the early 1980s, I saw a lot of guys souping up Datsun 510s and racing them on Mulholland. The reason they chose Datsuns over something like a Porsche is simple, I suppose. They were way more affordable than other sports cars. That was the whole point of Datsuns at the time. Datsun was trying to undercut the price of more expensive sports cars like MGs, Triumphs and Alfa Romeos. The cool thing was, Datsuns were more affordable, but they weren’t crap.
I already appreciated the spartan, but spunky 510. Then I discovered the 240z. I really dug the overhead cam, high-revving engine and I liked the fact that they were so deep into racing. I finally scraped enough money together to get myself a Z, but I had no budget to do anything serious with it. A buddy of mine had picked up a 2000 roadster. My 240z was more modern, but every time we’d drag race, he’d beat me. I really started to respect the roadsters. Especially when I saw my friend’s 2000 smoke a Mazda RX-7 in a street race. (The RX-7 actually wound up on the front lawn of an apartment building.) I remember thinking those little Datsuns really haul.
Unfortunately, my racing ambitions got put on hold while I pursued my childhood dream of digging ditches and cleaning carpets for slave wages. (I figured that not racing at all was actually less painful than racing with no budget.) But I stayed a Datsun guy. As I got into construction work, I needed a mini-pickup. Once again, Datsun/Nissan pickups hit in the sweet spot of affordability and reliability.
I started having success doing radio and was finally making a decent salary, but old habits die hard. After a lifetime of scrounging and scarcity, my mind was still stuck in the poor house. When the most you’ve ever paid for a vehicle is $1,200, coughing up 11 grand for a brand new car seems like stuff only Rockefellers or Kennedys do. And that was for a car I’d use every day. How could I possibly imagine spending serious folding money on a race car?
Picking up used motorcycles out of the classifieds was as extravagant as I would let myself get. I guess you have to ease yourself into these kinds of changes, and the used bikes were my first baby step out of the empty wallet state of mind.
The next step was when I bought a really cool 510 BRE replica on eBay that looked pretty solid. That’s also when I met Les Cannaday of Classic Datsun. Les’ whole life is Datsuns. He runs a business restoring vintage Datsuns and even re-pops and sells some fiberglass racing parts. He has his ear to the ground for anything Datsun.
I kept lurking on eBay and wound up finding an authentic Bob Sharp-built 610. It had been a backup car, so it was really clean and original, since it didn’t get raced much. It had the typically strong red, white and blue Bob Sharp livery, still in its original lacquer. It was relatively cheap and I thought it would be a cool car to have around the shop, so I picked it up just as kind of a show piece.
Les was always pushing me to do vintage racing and finally signed me up to run at Coronado in the 610. That started me racing Datsuns. Now, every time a vintage Datsun race car comes on the market, Les makes sure I know about it, if I haven’t seen it already. So, now I’m officially a Datsun guy.
There aren’t a lot of Datsun guys out there, but they’re super-dedicated. I really love showing up to vintage races with all of these hearty little four-bangers. One year that I was racing my 510 at Laguna Seca, there were a bunch of original Ferrari GTOs out there worth $30 million apiece. One GTO is probably worth more than the entire B-sedan class combined, but our group gets out there on that same track and drives as hard as anyone. The year I won the Rolex Cup for my 2000 Roadster, a Japanese guy who barely spoke any English came up to me practically in tears, showing me pictures of his right hand drive 2000.
I don’t know what Datsun would have to do to get more respect and appreciation in America. Sure, they’ve never had much of a presence at places like Indy, LeMans or Sebring. But guys like John Morton dominated in the 510 in the 1970s. And at the height of his fame, Paul Newman was running Datsuns and winning real bona fide races and championships, and nobody seemed to notice at all. So, maybe the question isn’t why am I into Datsuns, but why aren’t YOU into Datsuns?