Kataoka Racing Service is a workshop in Hyogo, which is in the Kansai region of western Japan. For years, they’ve held regular trackdays for nostalgics (which they call Battle Royal), and the most recent one was last weekend. Here’s a terrific vid, which shows what an awesome variety of cars that KRS get at their events. There are Hakos and Zeds galore of course, but also Isuzu Bellett, multiple 510s, Starlets, RX3s and even a Sunny Truck mixing it up on the bumpy corners of Central Circuit!
A while back, this Datsun 510 sold on eBay for $13,000, a steep price for what appeared to be a BRE-themed Datsun 510 replica. Only, it wasn’t a replica. According to the seller, it’s a one-of-a-kind prototype for a Datsun factory program that would have allowed buyers to put together their very own street-legal BRE Trans-Am 2.5 510. Goodies include a Nissan factory performance 5-speed, BRE suspension package, mild cam upgrade, high volume oil pump, raised compression, American Racing Libre wheels, 1 of 3 alleged hand-built LSDs, and a slew of BRE badging.
This could have been Datsun’s equivalent of the Boss Mustang or Camaro Z/28, but unfortunately the program never got off the ground. The aftermarket parts developed for it ended up being sold through BRE or Interpart. The seller also says that there were several of these prototypes built, but this is likely the only surviving complete, 100% numbers matching example.
The original owner was purportedly once a middleman between Nissan USA and BRE. The car also comes with an explosion of memorabilia and some very nice NOS spare parts. But get this. With the car exactly as it was when it sold for $13,000, the price tag is now $65,000 with a BuyItNow of $79,000. That’s almost a 600% increase in price with just the discovery of its proper bloodlines, the passage of a few months and a yellow 240Z upholstered with a wetsuit (if that’s your thing). Google stock, eat your heart out. Thanks again to David of Motoring J Style for the tip!
This recent article on Winding Road is a good read on the background of Martin Swig, a well-known California car collector. What it doesn’t mention though, is that Swig, along with his son David, in 2007 founded Motoring J Style, northern California’s very own car show celebrating Japanese car culture with a focus on vintage Japanese steel.
This year it’s back, and it promises to have even more treats in store, centering around a reunion of Peter Brock’s BRE race team, whose Datsun 510s took the 1971-72 SCCA Trans-Am 2.5 championships against the likes of Alfa Romeo and BMW. Mr. Brock himself and driver John Morton will be on hand to sign autographs and recount the historic wins and discuss his involvement with Hino’s short-lived US racing program. Nissan USA will display the 510 Morton drove to the checkered flag. In addition, there will be displays from Toyota USA along with their brands Lexus and Scion, a drift competition, a dirt track for rally stages and over 400 cars on hand.
Check out our coverage of last year’s event here. The 2008 Motoring J Style will be held at the Solano County Fairgrounds in Vallejo, CA on May 24, 2008. Mark your calendars!
In 1968, Mazda took the world’s first ever rotary-powered race car, its brand new Cosmo Sports, racing at one of Europe’s toughest enduros, the Marathon de la Route 84 Hours at Germany’s Nürburgring. It finished fourth, behind a pair of Porsche 911s and a Lancia.
Forty years later, Mazda is still fielding pistonless endurance machines, most recently at the 2008 Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona where it took the GT Class championship amidst a grid of Ferraris, a Corvette, a BMW M6 and yes, Porsches. In honor of this victory, Mazda Japan has created a website chronicling the race. Mazdafarians might want to take a look even though the site is in Japanese; the interviews are in English. Congrats to the Speedsource RX-8 team of Sylvain Tremblay, David Haskell, Nick Ham, and Raphael Matos.
We’ve done a couple of articles on Group A before (here and here) and here’s a series of race highlights of Japanese Group A races which show why it was such a fondly remembered series of racing.
Sigh. We wish we had the budget to head over to Switzerland. We’d love to attend the glitzy shindig known as the Geneva Motor Show (which is going on right now), sample some Swiss chocolate, and visit the Swiss Toyota Museum while we’re at it.
Alas, we have neither the time nor the funds, so we’re living vicariously through our buddies at Autoblog, who snapped some cool photos of Honda F1 racers, old and new. In the sixties, Honda had a knack for coming out of nowhere to take checkered flags, and this RA300, driven by John Surtees in its inaugural race at the 1967 Italian Grand Prix, was no exception. Not bad for an automaker who had only debuted their first car four years prior. Unfortunately, Honda hasn’t been quite as successful in recent years, but the company hopes the new RA108 will change its fortunes for the upcoming year. Maybe by placing the two machines side by side, they’re hoping the RA300’s aura will rub off.
The Geneva Motor Show continues until March 16, 2008.
Several readers have posted this nugget of awesomeness in our forums now, and with good reason. The Celica you see in the pic above is the end result of the most thorough, intense restoration we’ve ever seen for J-tin. It started life as a Group B rally car that competed in the Hong Kong-Beijing Rally of 1985 – when nearly all of that nation’s billion or so people were still riding bikes – enduring 2500 miles of dings and dents on unpaved terrain. Then it was left to rust for about 20 years.
At that point, most people would have written it off, but not the artisans at Makela Auto Tuning of Finland. By the looks of it, every body panel, seam, floorboard and frame rail was recreated from fresh steel. Metal is like putty to these people. We tried to comprehend the amount of effort and man-hours the restoration must have taken, but only reminded ourselves of grade school when we first learned about the concept of infinity. There’s really no point in even trying to describe it, so just check out their gallery. If a picture’s worth a thousand words, that’s over 300,000 words right there.
The best part is that as of January 2008, these mad Finns have begun work on a second Hong Kong-Beijing Rally Celica. If possible, this car looks to be in even worse condition that the first one, apparently composed of one part metal and 3 parts rust. This time, they’ve cut the car down to the bare frame and are doing nothing short of rebuilding it from scratch. It’s like the Bionic Woman, but with cars.
If you’re lucky enough to be in Japan on March 1-2, head over to the Nissan Motorsports Exhibition 2008 at the Red Brick Warehouse and Yokohama Marine Disaster Prevention Complex. It’s an annual event Nissan Japan puts on to celebrate all things racing and they typically pull out a good selection of cars both old and new from their collection for display.
This year’s theme is, naturally, all about the Skyline GT-R, as the birthday party continues in full swing. A full range of historic GT-Rs, in both production and racing form, is expected. They’ll even hoon it up a bit in actual race cars, and a Super GT-spec Nissan GT-R will be making demo runs. Other attractions include a “pitwork demo,” Nissan Collection merchandise, and a dedicated kids zone. Gotta start them off early, you know.
We did a piece on the DR30 Skyline and the FJ20 engine quite a long time ago, but a cache of old Group A racing videos on YouTube brought some memories flooding back. I used to have one you see.
Here are some videos from the 1987 Japanese Group A season, the year after the DR30 won the All-Japan championship. The videos include a time attack between a stock R31 GTS-X roadcar and the Advan Group A DR30 racecar (um…the racecar wins!) as well as highlights from a race at Tsukuba. This looks like an very early episode of Hot Version. Ahh…the memories.
Today (January 11) is racing legend Carroll Shelby’s 85th birthday. Although mostly known for his hopped up Mustangs, AC Cobras and cowboy hat, his racing contract with Ford ended in 1967. For the 1968 season, he helped prepare three Toyota 2000GTs for competition in SCCA C-production class.
Unfortunately, Toyota discontinued the program after just one year. In that year, however, the cars Toyotas racked up a slew of podium finishes and ended the season second in points only to long-established Porsche.
We will be featuring the #23 car in the Spring 2008 premiere issue of Japanese Nostalgic Car magazine. Click here for more images from our Monterey Historics gallery. Happy birthday, Mr. Shelby!
Sigh. We wish we had the budget to head over to Switzerland. We’d love to attend the glitzy shindig known as the Geneva Motor Show (which is going on right now), sample some Swiss chocolate, and visit the 
have begun work on a 
If you’re lucky enough to be in Japan on March 1-2, head over to the Nissan Motorsports Exhibition 2008 at the Red Brick Warehouse and Yokohama Marine Disaster Prevention Complex. It’s an annual event Nissan Japan puts on to celebrate all things racing and they typically pull out a good selection of cars both old and new from their collection for display.
Today (January 11) is racing legend Carroll Shelby’s 85th birthday. Although mostly known for his hopped up Mustangs, AC Cobras and cowboy hat, his racing contract with Ford ended in 1967. For the 1968 season, he helped prepare three Toyota 2000GTs for competition in SCCA C-production class.