Summer brings good weather and more car shows! The 44th Annual Concours D’ Elegance will take place once again at Stanford University in Palo Alto this Sunday, June 27. This show is typically geared towards those high dollar fantasy machines of the 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s but recently they have allowed Japanese cars to be displayed. ZCarGarage will bring several cars to the show and represent Datsun/Nissan. Although they will be not be judged this display will be a great forum for showing/increasing Japanese cars as truly collectible automobiles.
So come out to enjoy some of the finest cars in the world!
For full show details and driving directions click below:
PaConcours

Last Sunday we checked out the Canby Datsun Driving Show on our way back from a camping trip. This event is organized by the Northwest Datsuns group and is held at the Clackamas Fairgrounds in Canby, Oregon. Before I share with you how cool this event was here’s a couple gratuitous shots of our Z33 camping near the Columbia River Falls area 🙂

On to show!

                          
The Canby show is actually a 3 day affair with an Auto-x event on Friday, Swap Meet, and Car show on Sunday. It’s reminiscent of the All-Datsun Meet at Mt. Shasta but with plenty of shade, grass, kid-friendly activities, and gorgeous 70 degree weather. Upon entering the parking area I noticed that there were just as many show-entered cars as non-registered, both groups had some pretty incredible and rare rides, like this Datsun 200sx:
                                
It was engine-swaps ‘o plenty and (dare I say) almost seemed predictable to see 510s, roadsters, and Z’s with SR20DE(T) and KA24-series drivetrains. Most were exceptionally clean with attention to detail like this beautiful ’69 Roadster with a full S13 SR20DET drivetrain, Lotus Elise seats, Z32 Calipers, and a spotless engine bay:

     
The “Rat Rod” or “Ratsun” theme was in effect with several Datsuns, like this pickup. Dogs love trucks!
                          

It was quite refreshing to see these 2 super-clean L-series powered 510s, both boosted in different ways. The green car has EFI, while the red had a 32/26 under the box! Both cars had immaculate, semi-race-prepped interiors. Keepin’ it real with L-series power, gotta love it.

Speaking of “keeping it real”, as this pretty first-gen RX-7 rolled into the show I exclaimed “It takes some guts to bring a MAZDA to a DATSUN show!”, to which the owner replied, “Hey it’s not all Mazda!” And the crowd walked over to see under the hood of this Zoom-Zoom to find…NISSAN power! In the form of a KA24DE, factory clean looking install too.

Lots of pretty, restored 240Z cars, even a few 2+2s!

                    

Late-model rides to drool over too like this R34 GTS-T with a massive turbo:

Uber-clean S13 with an RB26-single turbo:

Nismo 370Z!

                    

Check the pictures below for everything from mild to wild. Canby had it all, plus a good vibe with great folks running the show.  Oregon is a long haul for us Bay Area folks, but if you happen to be near Portland or feel like a road trip, it’s worth visiting. So mark your calendars for next year’s event!

For a list of car show winners in each class click here:
Canby 2010 Winners
Click on the “continue reading” link below for the full picture album (107 pics)
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It’s time for another great show from ZONC. The weather will be awesome so bring your Nissan/Datsun to the Blackhawk Museum in Danville this Saturday, 6/19.
Join the caravan up to the show from ZCarGarage in San Jose. Meeting time is 8:30am Saturday morning at the shop.
ZCarGarage
140 Archer St.
San Jose, CA 95112

Costumes and decorated vehicles. Sounds like a parade? Ummm…sort of. It was actually the May 8-9 running of the 24 Hours of LeMons at Thunderhill Raceway Park in Willows, CA. This is a nationwide endurance race series for $500 cars. Teams must purchase and prep their vehicles for no more than $500. The limit does not include safety items like roll cage, brakes, wheels and tires. This event was 16 hours of racing over two days. Some LeMons events are a full 24 hours.

Teams “themes” are part of the fun, but the series is so popular that a good theme is often needed to get a team accepted to an event. This race included:
Two Starship Enterprises

A Supra with Tiger and Elin Woods on the roof

A Ford Ranchero wagon (built from an E-30 BMW)

And a beautiful 1958 Plymouth Fury (also built from an E-30 BMW)

There were many good drivers, but also many with little or no track experience. To make the race as safe as possible, the series prohibits even a hint of poor driving. Putting two or more wheels off the track, tailgating, not allowing faster cars to pass, spinning, etc. will get a team black flagged, whereupon they must go to the penalty area. The penalties, however, are hilarious. They might include writing a phrase on the car 100 times, reading a passage from a book “revival preacher style” to their team, or the parading through the paddock confessing their on-track sins. Regardless of the type of punishment, they keep the perpetrators off the track while the rest of the field adds to their lap count.

The bad news: Z cars typically don’t do well in this series (I think it’s because Z cars are so cool they need to be in pretty sad shape mechanically to fall to a value of $500). The organizers award a special prize, the Z Cup, to the Z car team that does the least poorly. This event’s prize went to The Underground from Tempe, Arizona, driving a 1985 Nissan 300ZX Turbo. They finished 19th out of 108. Not great considering the 18th place car was a Mazda 323.

The good news: This event’s winner was a Nissan. The winner on laps was team Rogue Squadron with their Star Wars themed Nissan SE-R. Way to go!

David Swig of MotoringJStyle teamed up with the Z Owners of Northern California (ZONC) to bring us “Turn Z” during the Historic Races held at Infineon Raceway last Sunday. It was a fantastic day with incredible weather and a very impressive showing of classic Datsuns and Nissans.

ZCarGarage once again was the meeting place for the morning caravan up to Sonoma. I highly recommend joining us when we caravan to an event because it is a fun experience. Motoring up the freeways with a group of fellow car nuts is not to be missed. This group included a nice mix of old/new: two 240z cars, a ’67 roadster, a twin-turbo 370z and 350z, a twin-turbo G35 coupe, and 2 more z33s.
Here we are enjoying an on-ramp to highway 80 going to Sonoma:

Morning fog burned off and gave way to a sunny sky with light breeze when we arrived at Infineon Raceway…I love the sound of engines blaring and the smell of race fuel in the air.

As we drove through the ticket gate I was joined by 3 other Datsun roadsters and we were escorted Nascar-style by an Infineon ring taxi to Turn 7, appropriately designated “Turn Z” where the Datsun/Nissan car corral was being held. To my surprise this corral was completely paved, and had a stunning view of the track. In fact, we were so close to the Turn 7 run-off that we had to re-park a few cars for safety!
Big thanks to ZONC and David Swig for giving us a great corral, it was much better than the corral we have at Laguna Seca which leaves your freshly detailed ride covered in a nice thick layer of dust with bits of hay in the interior.

There were plenty of cool old-school Japanese rides in the corral mixed with modern ones too.  At the peak there were close to 50 cars! Some notables:

Super clean period-restored 240z cars:

Datsun 510 with a turbocharged KA24DE drivetrain:

A ZG-flared SR20DET-powered 240z with a very JDM paint color:

A Toyota S800!

More Old-School Toyotas:

Lou’s RHD FairladyZ(Yes, those badges came from the factory!) with some killer 17″ Panasports(custom offset) and 255mm wide tires:

 

This fully restored 1967.5 Datsun 2000 roadster was just plain pretty:

After looking at cars in Turn Z we toured the paddock area to check out vintage race cars from all eras. Lots of high-dollar, exotic and American muscle cars that left us all drooling and dreaming. Attention to detail, craftsmanship and cleanliness were at ever corner, in addition to some serious and frantic wrenching by race crews.
We found 1 Datsun that was actually competing in the races, this 240z complete with light beer livery and  some interesting flares:

The garage area had some impressive IMSA/Can-AM cars, below is just a sample of what the paddock had to offer:

Once the paddock area was thoroughly inspected  it was time to watch some racing! Datsun/Nissan racing legend John Morton was driving in 2 races so we had to watch our hero! John was driving a Scarab and Sunbeam Tiger. Things got more interesting when we noticed that David Swig was in the same races as Morton, piloting the Monsterati and Shelby Mustang.

After watching a few races the end of the day was capped off with a parade lap around Infineon Raceway, where participants in the Turn Z corral could take their own cars out on the track! This was 3-4 laps of pure bliss for folks, and I am still hearing good things about it. What a great way to also show off our Japanese rides to the crowd too!

I really hope that this event reaches yearly status, and with more advance notice I’m positive turnout will be even greater. Thanks again to David Swig and ZONC. Turn Z was a success, here’s to the 40th Anniversary of the Z!

Click below for more pictures!
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