>From my latest Autoweek, some LBC content.
This is from the Oct 11 Autoweek
OPPOSITE LOCK
ENTHUSIASM THAT ENDURES IN THE COMPANY OF GOATS
BY Kevin A. Wilson
Rita and Fred Davidson's business card declares that they occupy their time
with: "goats, antiques, teddy bears, old houses," and . . . wait for it . .
"datsun sportscars." Hmmm. Old houses and antiques are nice traditional
pursuits. Teddy bears and goats have their own sort of charm, and
often boast an entertaining pedigree.
But Datsun sports cars?
O.K., so I cheated; the card suggests the Davidson's priorites are
are in inverse order to the way I've presented them. Still,
would Datsun be first word to leap to mind if you were asked to name the
the automotive equivalent of a teddy bear or an old house or an antique:
Or even a goat?
Consider all these as only slightly offbeat objects of enthusiasm,
though, and the car makes a perverse sort of sense, especially
when you see the business card and its line drawing of a Datsun Roadster.
Its got the hood scoop, marking it as a 2000 from the 1967-1970.
So wer're not talking Z cars here, but the SRL311 and predicessors,
the slab-sided Fair Lady roadsters dating to 1962-1963 and upadated in '65
and '68. A series of cars, you will remember, that was denigrated in its
time as a cheap Japanese knock-off of the "real thing," which of course
would have been a contemporary MGB.
The knock was unfair then; the British influence on Nissan/Datsun
is indisputable, but the cars came out at the same time, so it was a
case of parallel rather than sequential creation. It's even more unfair
now that we know without doubt which island nation was the one that had
its automotive act together. Even then, Datsun was adding a 150 hp high
performance version to the standard 135 hp sohc engine in the 2000
roadster while MG was whining that America's oppressive emissions rules
(PCV valves?) had strangled the 1800 cc pushrod four to a wimpy 92 hp.
You'll notice who's still in business in America.
This is one reason I've made a habit (if you do it twice,
intentionally, it's a habit right?) of looking up the Datsun-devout
Davidsons at the annual Datsun Roadster Meet. This is an event cleverly
held in conjunction with the Watkins Glen vintage race weekend each Sept.
Cleverly becouse there is hardly any place on God's green earth where a
Datsun roadster is more of an in-your-face object then in the village of
Watkins Glen on vintage weekend.
What's being celebrated there is a time oblivious to Japan's rise
as an automotive powerhouse. A time when serious auto races were won by
cars named Cunningham and Ferrari, Lotus and Chaparral, March and Tyrrell
but never, ever, by anything called a McLaren-Honda or a Toyota Eagle. One
cornerstone event at the Glen's vintage weekend is the Collier Cup Race.
For MGs only. Another is a parade of the old street circuit, open only
to cars that raced there 1948-52, meaning more MGs and Allards and
Jaguars. It still grates on some nerves here when the Datsuns show up.
Fred Davidson seems to like that part of having the annual meet here;
the Canadian almost gloats about the sidelong glances and deliberate snubs.
It somehow makes it more fun to know that the Datsun group's entusiam
runs as deep, or deeper, than some of the other clubs'. This year they
had a grand time touring a winery, where the vintner made up bottle
labels featuring one of their beloved roadsters. When it's time for
the exhibition/parade laps, the Datsuns maneuver around so they all go
out together in a clot. No other marque club has the cohesion to do this.
"NOT MGB" declares the license plate on the front of a C-Prod
prepared Datsun 2000 in the car corral, where the row of 20-
odd Fair Ladys is the filling in an over stuffed sandwhich between a few
Sunbeam Tigers and a handful of Porsche 911s. A Datsun flag flies
high in the sky and the paint on the cars glistens, making it all the more
evident that the paint on most of the MGBs three rows over no longer glistens
so deeply, if even it did. Not MGB indeed.
It may be that the folks at Nissan today are right to abandon their
pursuit of an enthusiast/performance image (AW, Aug. 9). Yet that's hard
to imagine when Datsun, as represented not only by the roadster group's
enthusiasm but also by the 510s and 240Zs that are an increasing presence
in vintage racing-is the only Japanese marque that can hold its head
high at a place like Watkins Glen on vintage race weekend. Never mind
their standing among purveyors of teddy bears and goats.
>I think this is a bit harsh on LBC's, but then it's fun to see news
>on LJC's
>
>Dana
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Dana Nojima University of Minnesota
Dana@egel1.med.umn.edu (612)626-0121
nojim001@staff.tc.umn.edu
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