On a recent JNC blog entry, here: http://japanesenostalgiccar.com/2011/05 ... /#comments

...JNC forum member and Isuzu fan 'JT191' made some rather interesting comments regarding the validity of Nissan's claims to ( over! ) 50 in-period race victories for the PGC10 / KPGC10 Skyline GT-R. Rather than continue - pointlessly - with an off-topic exchange on a JNC blog entry, I invited JT191 to either start a new thread on the topic himself, or I would do it for him. He hasn't created a new thread, so I've been to the supermarket, I've bought their entire stock of extra-wide tin foil, and I've started a thread. Let's see what happens.....

Here are some quotes from JT191, with some answers from me:



What you are calling "the original GTX" actually dated back a little further than that. For example, back in September 1968, Isuzu ISCC rather optimistically entered a pair of modified PR61 Belletts ( fitted with the G161W engine ) in the 'R-II' class of the Suzuka 1000km race. I say optimistically because this put them up against some fairly specialised machinery in the 'R-II' class - but then Isuzu had no choice because at that point the G161W engine was not fitted to a homologated production model of Bellett ( more on racing class entries later ). In that '68 Suzuka 1000km, one Bellett GTX finished in 8th place overall and 3rd in the 'R-II' class. The other GTX was unclassified, along with about 22 other cars in a race with high attrition.

In June 1969 Isuzu's ISCC once again entered a pair ( the pair... ) of Bellett GTXs in the 'R-II' class of the Suzuka 1000kms race. Once again they would be up against some fairly exotic machinery in that 'R-II' class, but also once again they had no choice as the G161W engine still wasn't homologated for more suitable classes. This time both GTXs failed to be classified, the first finishing over 71 laps behind the winning car and with over 20 cars in front of it, and the second a further 30 laps adrift. Some you win, some you lose....

Interestingly, JT161 chooses to cite the result from the August 9th-10th 1969 Suzuka 1000km event, where one of the Bellett GTXs took advantage of the high attrition rate of the favourites ( a Porsche Carrera 6 ran ot of fuel, one of the Honda R1300s crashed and burned and the other suffered woes ) and came in with an overall win and first in the 'R-II' class. There were just two other cars in the 'R-II' class that day, as many teams were over at Fuji Speedway that weekend and Nissan's works PMCS team were notching up another win in the TS-II class with the GT-R.....

So, the story is perhaps a little bit more complex than is being presented. JT161's "first GTX" was in fact not a full production model and was forced to run in a class that - all being equal - it would probably struggle to be competitive in. Still, the race is not always to the swift....



By the way, you might like to note that ASAOKA san's given name is spelled Shigeaki, not "Shigeki".



I'm afraid you seem to have little real idea of what was going on with the racing classes during that period. It was something of a moveable feast, with classes having different rules and capacity limits depending on the race series the particular race organisers, and even the venue chosen. More on this later, but note that the divisions you have stated above are actually incorrect.

You seem to have been under the impression that Nissan was claiming OVERALL race wins for ALL of its '50 Victories', when in fact they did nothing of the kind. However, there WERE some overall victories involved in the list. More on that too later.



Quite ironic that you wrote this about the GT-R, when you cited the Bellett GTX above. The Bellett GTX was exactly what you ( incorrectly ) slate the GT-R for being; namely a "pre-production" model. Both the PGC10 and KPGC10 were properly homologated production models ( is that the case for the Bellett GTX / Bellett GTR? ) and there was certainly no skullduggery involved in their eligibility for the races they took part in.



More later, as I'm warming up the scanner to provide you with the list you say does not exist....

First of all, I think it would be fairly preposterous to claim that Nissan "copied" the 'GT' acronym from Isuzu as Isuzu were certainly not the first to use it. Secondly, the 'GTX' name was fair game, as Isuzu didn't use it on a production model before Nissan. They got beaten to it, that's the long and short of it. How many cars did Isuzu use the 'GTX' name on anyway? Was it just the two, or were there more? Same too for the 'GT-R' name. Nissan beat Isuzu in putting it on a production model by more than six months. You can try to claim that the Bellett GTX was actually a Bellett GTR, but you're going to have to come up with some evidence to prove it. For sure, the Bellett GTX couldn't be both GTX and GTR....

About your claims for the Sept. 22nd-23rd Suzuka 1000kms above: It's a pretty tall claim to say that the Bellett GTX "scored favourable results" when one car came home eighth overall and third in class when the other one broke, just like half the rest of the field. You mention that "all three Skylines in that race retired", but you don't mention that fact that they were all privateer entries in privately prepped S54Bs. The '50 Victories' list pertains to the C10-series GT-Rs, so this race has nothing to do with that, and neither do those privateer S54Bs. Finishing ahead of that lone GTX were indeed a Toyota 7, a Porsche 906 and a Daihatsu P5, but also three Honda S800s and a Fairlady 2000.

If only you had asked me, I could have saved you four years of wading....

I don't know why you would expect to find such a list on the JAF record files? It's not JAF's business to be compiling lists of class and overall victories by model and manufacturer - that's for the manufacturer to do. They use such lists for purposes that I would think are fairly obvious, namely for sales promotion and publicity. That's why they go racing.

Here's an example of what Nissan started doing with their list of victories once it started getting well on the way to the 50. As you can see, they had got up to 41 at the point this fold out brochure / poster kit was published after the '71 Japan Grand Prix meeting, and you can also quite clearly see that they took care to point out class victories as well as overall victories:

Alan, aka KPGC10-001218, you didn't like any of the threads already discussing this topic, you were not competent enough to provide documentation to prove your fan boy claim, but you do actually have the foolish idea that starting a thread by misquoting what has already been said will in some way make a lie true. I commend you for having more gall than brains.

I mentioned in the hotwheels thread only that the little toy was not the original GTX. (No claim was ever made that the original GTX was a production version, only that the model shown was not the first Japanese car to use that acronym). Alan, or whatever name he desires at the moment, directly responded touting the standard line of commonly held mythology of how the Hakosuka Skyline is the only noteworthy car raced in the golden era of Japanese grand prix, and that all other vehicles are merely road going garbage. The entire content of Alan's contribution to the conversation would be accurately characterized as "50 Victories, 50 Victories, 50 Victories, 50 Victories, 50 Victories, 50 Victories, 50 Victories, 50 Victories, 50 Victories, 50 Victories, 50 Victories, 50 Victories, 50 Victories, 50 Victories".

I pointed out that the Skyline was a competent and competitive vehicle, raced among a large number of competent and competitive vehicles from other manufacturers, and that the reputation of the Skyline is not raised by claiming that every car it raced against was a piece of $hit. Quite to the contrary, recognizing the high level of competition and high quality of all vehicles fielded raises the level of the winner.

However, having waded through the JAF race results from 1966 through 1994, I foudn that the Hakosuka did not win all, or even most, of the races it competed in. Further, there was not a total of 50 victories for the Hakosuka in total. And there were many notable events in which Hakosuka GTRs had lost by a wide margin to four cylinder cars from Honda, Toyota, Mazda, Mitsubishi, and even Isuzu.

I had previously discussed this with some Japanese racing history buffs, and was directed to the following quote:
[ただし、C10型GT-Rは49連勝したという記述を証明する当時の資料はディーラーの宣伝しかない。その中には総合優勝ではなくクラス優勝であったり、日産車のみが参加しているレースでの優勝も勝利数に加えられている。例えば37勝目とされるレースは総合優勝がフェアレディ240Zで、スカイラインGT -Rはクラス優勝（総合5位）であるが、連勝記録に加えられている。]
The short and concise meaning is "They used creative math".
The more detailed version is: This claim was made in Nissan advertising only and has no other source to back it up. The count was based on class victories and excluded any other Nissan vehicle entered (Fairlady). Not a list of overall victories at all, and many class victories came from finishes that rank very far down at the bottom of the field.

I would additionally point out that it has been mentioned in previous discussions of this topic on this website:
As soon as the Hakosuka GTR was released and entered into racing competition, the Fairlady disappears from the entry list of nearly and all events that a Hakosula GTR is entered in. The Fairlady had previously competed head to head against the pre-GTR Hakosukas, Bellett GT, Corona, S800, Bluebird, etc. This makes every appearance of Nissan preventing the Hakosuka GTR from loosing to the Fairlady in open competition.
Any way you measure it, the Hakosuka GTR is a six cylinder DOHC car competing against four cylinder DOHC cars.
Nissan used a McPherson strut front suspension with lower front trailing arm only. The rest of the field used double wishbone with a shock absorber. Older technology might look like a disadvantage for the rest of the field, but the double wishbone does not loose front camber as the suspension compresses on the outside while executing a turn. McPherson strut suspension does, which induces understeer, which is the primary handling characteristic of the Hakosuka. So you have smaller displacement nimble cars racing against a larger displacement straight line car. On any track that did not have a long enough main straight for the Hakosuka to outrun the smaller displacement cars, the Hakosuka was at a serious disadvantage and most often lost.

Further investigation revealed the class divisions after 1968 or 1969:
1. Up to 1.6 liter Four Door.
2. Two Door.
3. Above 1.6 liter Four Door.
(Displacement typo acknowledged and corrected on the hotwheel toy thread).
Note the fact that Corona, Bellett, Bluebird, etc., all featured potent DOHC four cylinder engines which round UP to 1.6 liter from 1.5XX actual displacement.
Also note the fact that the Hakosuka GTR was introduced as a Four Door Sedan, and only later released as a Two Door Coupe. And that the Four Door Sedans remained in competition after the Two Door was introduced.
Why is this?
Because Nissan could stick their car into a class where no other vehicles competed. It did not matter if the over 1.6 liter Sedan class actually finished behind the other classes. The goal was not to win against other cars, but to have a victory to count for the advertising campaign.

Now, all this leads to one and only one conclusion:
The claim of 50 victories is a manufactured myth without basis in fact and does not stand up to scrutiny.
This myth exists because someone translated a piece of Nissan advertising, and posted it on Rumorpedia as a fact. People who are fans of Nissan did not question the validity of the claim, and Rumorpedia is based on popular vote, not factual verifiability. So fan-boys repeat the same myth over and over, and without any bi-lingual skeptics to challenge the myth, it keeps spreading.
The myth is recognized in Japan by the local population as a very shaky and contrived claim which has no source other than advertising.

I will state one more time and much more directly:
It would be nice if fans of Hakosukas would conduct their discussion and commentary with a little more humility and a lot less arrogance. The popularity of the car is at least partially based on a myth that does not live up to the facts.

Here's another - more comprehensive - list. It is more comprehensive because it was compiled after the fact. As you can see, in the column on the far right it lists whether the victories were overall, or by class.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask

If you want any details about the listed races, then please don't hesitate to ask. I have a pretty good archive of period race reports, and in some cases the programs from the actual races ( which clearly state the race dvisions / classes, and which don't bear any resemblance to what you have been describing up to now ).

The race reports usually list all the entrants and of course the results. They don't seem to correspond with your claims that Nissan raced the GT-Rs on their own ( er, surely somebody would have noticed.... ) or that the Fairladies magically "disappeared".

Perhaps I should pull some examples out for you - and everybody else - to demonstrate? Here's a small part of the reference material. Be my guest:

Here's another list. This one is nice because the * mark on the far left indicates a WORKS ( PMCS / SCCN ) factory race team entry. All the others without stars are either privateer entries, or 'works supported' semi-privateer efforts. Some of those 'works supported' / privateer entries got to use ex-works cars, or ex-works parts:

And here's another. I like this one because it actually shows the gaps in the numbered run of wins ( ie - it was never claimed to have been a 'straight run' of 50 ). The black stars in the far left column indicate "Haisen race". It means races lost. Not won. Beaten:

Taking your points one-by-one: I don't see any other threads on this exact topic, I do seem to have been "competent enough" to provide documentation ( you still seem to be in denial about the existence of 'the list' ) and I have been quoting you VERBATIM. You are simply being called to account for what you wrote. Maybe that's a new experience for you? I may well have "more gall than brains", but at the moment I believe the ball is in your court. Let's see how this plays out.



So you're complaining about me "misquoting" you, but then in the next paragraph you come up with this "road going garbage" stuff. And then....



"...every car it raced against was a piece of $hit". Classy.



1966 through 1994? The period in question for Nissan's '50 victories' claim for the C10-series GT-Rs by Nissan is 1969 through 1973! You would have found - if you had the correct reference data - that Nissan's works PMCS / SCCN entered PGC10 and KPGC10 race cars did in fact win the majority of races they were entered into, either by class and/or overall. If you have any HARD DATA from TRUSTED SOURCES which proves otherwise, then please post it here.



I'm not sure that I'm conversing with somebody who has any great depth of knowledge when it comes to racing. Really, what part of all this do you not understand? Of course many of the wins are class wins! Who on earth told you that they were all outright wins regardless of class? That's how mixed-class racing works! The Bellett GTXs you champion were racing primarily in class too, although - as you have taken great pains to point out - one of them did indeed take an overall win ( just like the GT-Rs did on more than one occasion - look at the LIST ). Do you honestly believe that all the different class entries that are going to be turning up for the 2011 Le Mans 24hrs next week are all expecting OUTRIGHT VICTORY? They are all racing primarily to win their class, and the chances for giant-killing are slim at best. It's the whole basis for this type of racing. Do you not understand that?

It is simply false to state that Nissan excluded other non-GT-R Nissan entries from their list ( you cited the Fairlady ) as if they were beaten IN CLASS then it would have been common knowledge to all observers and to anyone recording / reporting events. Nissan could not delete the evidence of losses in class, as the media would show the truth. So show me some EVIDENCE of this practice please.

There's very little "math" involved in the list. Either a cars wins its class ( and/or takes an overall victory ) or it doesn't. The victories in Nissan's list are all historically recorded class wins and/or overall race wins. Simple as that. I remind you that up to now you have been denying the existence of the list at the same time as claiming that the list was false. You can't have your cake and eat it.

More later. I have work to do.

Stick a broom up my arse and I'll sweep up as I go along too.

How about some help with this topic, even if it's only some moral support? Some added voices of common sense would be appreciated....

Settle petal, it was largely meant " tongue in cheek" shoulda used italics I s'pose
...that broom image..eerrgh
Anyway! As atonement for my sins (OOohh my many sins! ) I offer the following picture from an article in "Racing On" issue 444.' Be nice if I could read Japanese....



following is some rare pics to appease JT191 , of C10's that didn't WIN

So! Al,...Baby! are we still friends?
Jim.
edit:Pics are arse about but you'll figure it out

_________________
Prince & Skyline spoken here!
プリンス ＆スカイライン ここで話さ！

I'm not sure that I get where JT's coming from...as Alan has said, some of the Skyline's 50 wins in period were class wins, but I'll try to put that in context for ppl who might not be so familiar with the racing in the period.

I think we have to remember that in the late 60s and early 70s, Japan was an emerging economy, so especially in the big-banger racing classes, the grids weren't really all that big. So for the long endurance races, it was common for the organisers to lump different classes into the one race. It's kinda inconceivable today, and would be equivalent to a race where you had Touring Cars, Super GT and Le Mans racers all racing at the same time In this pic you can clearly see Le Mans style racers, Skylines, and further down the field...some Isuzu Bellets


So you had situations like this:


And this...I think this pic below is of the 47th of the 50 victories.


...and the results are this:


A Hako comes in 7th outright, but first in the Touring Sedan class, beaten by some can-am style race cars and a couple of GT-class 240Zs. Alan can probably correct me here, but I assume that the GTS-1 class 240Z would have looked like this (and again, notice that it's a race of GT and Le mans style race cars mixed together):


...and would have been running something like this under the bonnet, a 280hp LY crossflow motor, which is a bespoke racing motor and isn't really built to the same specs as the Hako motor, which had to be production based for the Touring Sedan class.


And I think the car that won that race would be a Lola T212 like this:


So if a Hako could win its class in a mixed race, then you can count that as a win....I don't think that anyone is expecting it to win outright.

When we did our first blogpost 4yrs ago on the Hako racing history (we really should fix those broken pic links...) we said so too, ie that the Zed cars were faster than teh Hako racers more often than not. But then again they are racing in a different class.
http://japanesenostalgiccar.com/2007/11 ... -hakosuka/

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Alan, what a drama queen you are to characterize others as nuts shopping for tinfoil to line their homes and then act as if you are mortally wounded when those you have characterized respond in kind.
And the immediate run of misspellings of the registered name of your target. What class you show in your conduct.
How much more arrogance can you display. And your commentary makes obvious your attitudes of the rest of us who do not think the sun rises and sets squarely in the tailpipe of a Skyline.

I can already see that Alan has chosen to conduct his argument on the level of a 12 year old, with the scoring based on quantity of posts, how far the debate can be diverted from the topic, and the level of absurdity of those diversions. Well done Alan, you demonstrate black belt level skills in avoiding the topic. You'll go very far in this world, as long as content, knowledge, and expertise have nothing to do with your path of direction.


Optimistic performance of the Bellett GTX?
I pointed out only that the use of GTX by Isuzu predates that of Nissan and provided a race date with results better than I could have accomplished, so I consider it respectable. I have not seen or heard stories of any other manufacturer taking a SOHV 4 cylinder, 2 door four seat production coupe, replacing the roof and fenders with aluminum panels, bolting in a DOHC, 8 valve, 4 cylinder, engine, and putting it into competition against single seat, open and closed top sports racers.
August 22-23, 1968, Suzuka 1000 km.
(Appears to be the oldest result I can find and dates the use of the name GTX.)
http://www.jaf.or.jp/CGI/msports/result ... 1968000080
Apparently a respectable enough finish to position eight, overall win going to a Toyota 7, the other Toyota 7 finishing in 29th position. I see regular Belletts finishing 11th, 14th, 21st, 28th, 32nd, 39th, 40th, and the other GTX finishing 35th, which would not be much to brag about except that the highest finishing Skyline took the 42nd position. I see the mighty R380 retired without finishing a lap.

Attrition?
They say "Before you can finish a race first, first you must finish." Unless Alan is going to suggest that the conditions were somehow different for the nine Belletts that finished in front of all the Skyline, than the for all the Skylines, or that the attrition was caused by some sort of foul play on the part of the Belletts, then the conditions were the same for all competitors and any complaining is, as Allan previously termed it, sour grapes.

Suzuka 12 hour, August 9-10, 1969, More Attrition?
Wow, every time Nissan races at Suzuka the loss is due to attrition? More sour-Alan-grapes?
http://www.jaf.or.jp/CGI/msports/result ... 1969000160
Bellett fans are rather proud of this event, the GTX took first place overall.
According to the results, a Corolla, a Publica, a Bluebird and a regular, SOHC or SOHV Bellett finished 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th, and the top finishing Skyline, a Skyline GTR, took 7th.

The entire remainder of the GTX entries I could find:
http://www.jaf.or.jp/CGI/msports/result ... 1969000106
http://www.jaf.or.jp/CGI/msports/result ... 1969000151
http://www.jaf.or.jp/CGI/msports/result ... 1969000152
http://www.jaf.or.jp/CGI/msports/result ... 1970000216

All this was found the hard way. There is no book to skim through and be spoon fed someone else's opinion or spin. Just learning to recognize the word ベレット in the results list, start with:
http://www.jaf.or.jp/CGI/msports/result ... 1969000001
and go through:
http://www.jaf.or.jp/CGI/msports/result ... 1969999999
and look at every page.
Then change the date and do the same for every other year in the database.


The spelling of Shigeki.
Really Alan, directly to spelling as a cornerstone argument. And all the -san crap, as if that proves you are more authentically Japanese than any of the rest of us.
Go back to that first link cited:
http://www.jaf.or.jp/CGI/msports/result ... 1969000160
The man's name is listed as: 重輝. When I type in "shige", my Japanese word processing program gives me: 重. When I type in "ki", my Japanese text editing program gives me: 輝. When I type in "aki", the above listed Kanji is not offered as an option for that combination of letters. I make no claim that the name entered on the JAF results was spelled correctly by the clerk transcribing the paper results into the computer, but that is what the document says.
I would additionally point out that running a non-scientific Google search, I get 11,XXX results for Shigeaki Asaoka, and 20,XXX results for Shigeki Asaoka. If document content is any indication of accepted use, then dropping the
I would also point out that dropping the second vowels is the accepted standard for Romanization of Japanese words, and I see no evidence of Alan's holiness spelling Tokyo as "toukyou", Osaka as oosaka", or Mazda as "matsuda".


I see no link or documentation offered supporting Alan's claim of class divisions.
And it remains conspicuous that there are so many instances where Skylines did not finish above other four cylinder cars in the JAF database for the 1969 thorugh 1972 years, and the lack of outright wins for Skyline for the same period.


Stealing GT, GTX, and GTR?
GT has been borrowed so often it is effectively public domain.
GTR is no longer very exclusive, Noble makes a very nice GTR.
GTX is quite a bit rarer.
But the first to use in a market would be the one with the most claim. There is no argument regarding first use of GT in Japan. What's the likely beginning of Nissan's use? Two Nissan executives sitting in the old Yokohama headquarters: First exec: "Hey, those guys down the street in Fujisawa put out a car they call the GT, what should we do in response?" Second Exec: "Start stamping out GT badges and sticking them on the back of Skylines or we'll start loosing sales, you dolt!"
GTX, clearly predates Nissan's use.
GTR, taking into consideration that production starts before sales, the first to sell is not the first to use. With the GTX, and the fact it was the obvious missing link between the GT and GTR, it is plain to see Nissan was not the first to make use of the name, just the first to push cars off the assembly line. And apparently prematurely because their performance in racing competition through 1969 would lead to lots of sour-Alan-grapes.
Additionally, in other markets, you don't see direct competition borrowing model names. There was no "Camaro GT" in response Ford's offering and there was no "Mustang SS" in response to Chevy's offering.

Production car versus racing prototype?
Completely invalid point. As if Alan would not cry foul if Isuzu had introduced a R380 production car in 1970. Or if Chinese car maker Cheri introduced a Skyline model today.


Withholding the Fairlady and Bluebird from competition against the Skyline GTR.
Go through the race results as described above, start with 1969000000001, and go through 1969999999999. Then do the same for 1970, 1971, 1972.
For 1967, 1968, and the first half of 1969, Skylines are seen in competition with Belletts, Fairladies, and Bluebirds. After the middle of 1969, this changes. Belletts compete against Fairladies and Bluebirds in many races. Belletts compete against Skylines, but never do the Skylines mix with the Fairladies and Bluebirds.
Go through the database, it's plain to see. No spoon feeding from a fan book is going to reveal that fact.


41 races won in 1971.
That's not the 50 that Alan chants from sun up to sun set. It also avoids 1969 and 1970.
I would first ask the source and the citation for the picture. Likely a fan book, written for Skyline enthusiasts, based on more Nissan advertising content, and filtered through a writer who wants to make Skyline enthusiasts happy when reading his book.
More importantly, this list has not been provided in a format that it can be checked by me against the JAF database. I never claimed to be able to read Japanese, and can not cut and paste the content of a jpeg or enlarge to the point that I could read and waste half a lifetime looking up Kanji symbols in a three inch thick Kanji dictionary, matching the little tree and diagonal arcing lines with the radicals in order to find the root words and then pray I can match them with the proper names they make when assembled in groups of two or three.


A list of 55 races, maybe 56, it's hard to read the pixels.
Again, source, citation, and presentation in a manner and format that it can be verified.


Documentation sourced from Nissan advertising.
Central to Alan's argument is that this list of 50 was in Nissan's promotional literature.
People are not known for being overly honest when they are selling cars. The last time I checked, car salesmen were considered relatively dishonest and the industry as a whole is not exactly on the list of most respected professions.
A very good recent example might be Ford's claim that the Fusion will have a higher resale value in five years than a Camry.
Is there any need for pointing out the over used "Best in Class" which is always a list of the better aspects of the car being sold, compared against the worst aspects of a list of other cars cherry picked to show they are worse. All the time ignoring the shortcomings of the product being sold.
And does anyone need to point out the advertising campaign of the 1980's making fun of the ridiculousness of automobile marketing, where Lying Joe claimed his cars were faster than a speeding bullet and his trucks were the only ones that would survive an attack of giant lizards.
Anything sourced from a marketing department is suspect and needs to be gone through with a fine toothed comb because the marketing department is in charge of lying about the product.


Now Alan can go through and post another dozen off topic responses, never address the central issue, and continue smarmy, disrespectful shots while feigning maximum injury when he is met with the same bile he dishes out.

Ok, what started out as a bit of friendly ribbing seems to be getting out of hand. Keep it to the facts, guys, and leave out the personal comments.

I think this is a great thread for guys on the forum who don't necessarily own a library full of books about Japanese racing history, so I think everyone's enjoying watching the debate unfold and all the information coming out.

But keep it clean boys. One more personal comment and I'll have to reluctantly lock this.

/mod

**************************
But in terms of the GT-X name, I think Plymouth beats everyone to the punch with the 1967 GT-X muscle car. And the Japanese makers don't seem to be too precious about GT-names anyway, Mazda, Toyota, Nissan and Isuzu all have production cars with the GTR name.

And the 1968 race that had the Bellett with the aluminium body was actually against the old-shape Skyline (which had been racing since 1963) and not the Hako?

I got several books which list the first 50 race victories between mid 1969 and early 1972. There aren't *that* many races in the Touring Sedan championship every year, so many of those races were non championship events, or endurance races with fields of mixed classes. But even if you reduce it that figure of 50 to restrict it to just races for Touring Sedan class only, then you'll find that C10 Skyline won them all outright until Dec 1971 when the RX3 won. And you can't do better than that

I think in 1969, it's the old convertible Fairlady that's in circulation, and it wouldn't be racing in the same Touring Sedan class as the Hako. The later (240Z shape) Fairlady raced in the GTS I & II class, because presumably wasn't eligible for Touring Sedan class because it didn't meet the minimum spec for interior space for the class. But there were plenty of races where Zeds and Hakos shared the track, and like the result I posted up, more often than not the Zeds would finish ahead...but that's a little like comparing GT300 with GT500.

_________________

I'm sorry, but your misspelling of the romanisation of ASAOKA san's given name only serves to prove that you have been relying on one basic resource to inform your misconceptions. Don't you have any other reference material other than machine translations of JAF's website?

I often write 'san' after Japanese names because it is polite and respectful to do so. Think of it what you like. But to get back to my point, here is some evidence to back up my claim that the correct romanisation is Shigeaki rather than "Shigeki":

Just a little reminder of what you kept saying:










So, I came up with the list - from several sources, and can provide more if anyone else is in any doubt that such lists exist - but you are still in denial? The lists give dates, identify the race meetings, circuits, specific event names, driver names, car numbers etc etc and you are still in denial?

This is not some fabrication by the manufacturer or some advertising company. These events were witnessed by spectators, media and race sanctioning bodies alike. They have continued to be discussed down the years since, and - as you have seen from scans above - the independent Japanese media has re-examined the events many times and has come to the same conclusions. You can't just make this stuff up....

You appear to have been under the impression that Nissan was claiming that ALL of these 50 victories were 'Sogo' ( outright / overall ) wins, rather than in-class wins. The fact is, they were a mixture of both. In fact, when I tot up the totals from one of the lists ( this time covering 56 results ) I see the following:

34 outright victories and 22 class victories. Of those class victories, 7 were 2nd overall, 5 were 3rd overall, 2 were 4th overall, 4 were 5th overall, 2 were 6th overall, 1 was 7th overall and 1 was 12th overall.

However you look at it, that's a fairly impressive record of success. Especially so considering that 'only' 8 of the outright victories were in races with only one racing class, as it means that no less than 26 outright victories involved beating cars in other classes - often cars running in the 'R' and 'GTS' categories, which should have won. The GT-Rs ran in several classes depending on the race organiser and the rules for the particular meeting, including T, TII, Class 4, Class 3, TS, TSI, TSII, TSIII, TSIV and class C.

All this, and still 'JT191' ( I don't know this fellow's real name ) posts both spurious claims and incorrect data. Some of his posts regarding class rules and categories appear to be for the 1968 season and before, when the PGC10 and KPGC10 GT-Rs - which the whole '50 victories' legend is based on - were not racing. I post data from multiple sources, much of it being based on original race reports and literature from the period concerned as well as contemporary - independent - reference material. All I hear in response to data and evidence given is stuff like this:



How do you explain to somebody that a list of 41 wins published in a Nissan promotional flyer from 1971, which clearly includes wins from 1969 and 1970 as well as part of 1971, does not contain evidence of the 50 wins because they had not happened yet?! Hello.....?






Again, I have to earn a living at least part of the day, so that's all for now. More later.

Kevin, what started out as a friendly note to widen the knowledge of people reading the blog entry, turned south when sour-Alan-grapes responded with:



Any and all opportunity for calm and respectful discussion went out the window with Alan’s fan-boy BS dissertation and condescending attitude. He displays no respect, deserves no respect, and will receive no respect.

My suggestion, lock the thread now because I guarantee this will continue with nothing but Alan receiving exactly what he dishes out.


Plymouth GTX.
Not sold in the Japanese market, not a direct competitor to Isuzu or Nissan.
The point was the first use. Second use by a direct competitor is the tipping point between the original use and the whoring out of the name to the point that it does not mean anything any more. Excellent example: SUV advertising claiming GT or sports car handling for a mini van with knobby tires (SUV). Both GT and sports car have lost their intended use to the point that the words mean nothing.

GT I, GT II, Touring Sedan
The fan-boy fiction history has the four door Hakosuka competing in direct competition with Bellett GT/GTR, Corolla coupe, and other cars which do not have four doors. Very clearly the fictional history lacks the accuracy to show that two and four door cars would be divided into different classes. This is a point I have repeated numerous times.
And the change in body of the Fairlady does not resolve the fact that Fairladies competed against Belletts in 1968, 1969, 1970, and 1971, but did not mix with the Hakosukas in 1970 and 1971. The Bellett didn’t change. If the change excludes the Fairlady from competing against the Hakosuka, it would also have excluded the Fairlady from competing against the Bellett. The race results show the Fairladies and Hakosukas were not even entered in the same races. The different class argument goes out the window when the cars are not even on the track at the same time, in the same events. This is evidence of chicanery.





Alan, your preoccupation with proving you are more authentically Japanese than the rest of us, and insistence that this be the first thing you address in your argument, proves nothing other than the fact that your argument is weak and you don’t have anything more important to say than to criticize someone else for using common spelling and familiar language form versus elitist, archaic spelling and unjustified polite language form when speaking English which has no polite form.
I stand with my previous statement, I use the commonly used form of the man’s first name, as used by the JAF on the official records.
If you want to make this a discussion of spelling and colloquialisms, let’s go right into your misspelling of the American English word Romanization, on a website hosted in the USA, in a world where American English speakers outnumber British English speakers by roughly four to one. We could spend hours debating the word grey vs. gray, and never get anywhere near debunking fan-boy fiction.


Kindly submit the list in a usable form. Specifically, text form. English or Japanese. I can do nothing with a jpeg. I never claimed to be able to read Japanese, I claim only to be diligent enough to search through the official JAF records, something you apparently can or will not do.
As Alan’s holiness has already made clear, the rest of us mere mortals are not qualified to translate to his satisfaction, and as I have pointed out, I am not going to try to decode that fuzzy, unreadable mess by matching five pixel tall kanji symbols against a kanji dictionary.

Further, you still have provided no citations for the sources of the jpegs, or the sources of the information used to make the charts shown in the jpegs.

I point out again, advertising content is not a valid source for anything.
Advertising content that has been repeated and reprinted in fan-boy books without any verification is not a valid source. If there is some citation that the fan-boy book verified the list and confirmed it’s accuracy, that is a start. But no such foot note or citation has been provided.


Alan, you have provided a list that numbers whatever it numbers. It can not be verified, validated, or even read, in the form submitted. It proves nothing.

The rest of us who follow cars that do not generate tens of thousands of dollars in memorabilia and book sales per year, do not have stacks of fan-boy books to thumb through.
Very clearly there is a dearth of content written about the Hakosuka in Japanese. Doubtless a good percentage is crap. And a small percentage of that content has been turned into a large number of books about the Hakosuka in English. What is the accuracy of the Japanese books? How well researched are the English books? Do the English books have a single source or multiple sources? Are facts and details checked from multiple citations, or is the information from a single source that has been re quoted a multiple of times?
I would also point out that the content of automotive books in general has shown to be extremely light weight in content, without specifics and an overwhelming abundance of opinion over content. Fan-boy books are even worse.

Of the little bit written about the less common cars, there is much less in Japanese and usually a few paragraphs in a big “book of cars” in English. Specifically regarding Isuzu information, I can easily find glaring inaccuracies in the few paragraphs of English writing. I can read through articles written by well meaning members of car clubs, who use 30 and 40 year old sales brochures as their sole source of information, and find many examples of how the brochure and the actual vehicle do not agree. I can spend months and years decoding the Japanese articles, and find a variation of stories. I can drag information out of Japanese owners and experts, factory drivers, and company executives, and find that their stories do not always match.

I don’t know anyone else who went to the time and effort to sort through the JAF website official race results pdf files. And it certainly was not because there is so much information out there about the cars I follow.
I would wager that prior to me posting the links on this website, there were probably a handful of people who knew these documents existed: me, the poor clerk who keyed in the files, and the supervisor who told the poor clerk to key in the files. It isn’t indexed or linked to from the JAF website, and makes every appearance of being an unknown and unused database.
Certainly Alan did not find or sort through the tens of thousands of files. Certainly Alan does not want anyone to go through his fan-boy lists and match them to the official results to see if they do or do not match the fiction.


No, not really, and that has already been discussed:
viewtopic.php?f=21&t=2212&p=22362#p22362
The JAF database shows results for about 600 officially sanctioned circuit races for each year, 1969, 1970, and 1971. That’s 1800 races in three years. 50 divided by 1800 is not a terribly wonderful victory percentage.
Let’s say half those documents are for the qualifying race before the main race. 900 divided by 50 is not a terribly wonderful victory percentage either.

This illustrates the problem Alan has. He is not working from the JAF documents. He is working from books written specifically for people who are fans of Hakosukas.
There is no fan-boy literature for me to quote or scan jpegs from. Such things don’t exist. All I can refer to is the race documents from the sanctioning organization. And the documents from the sanctioning body don’t match the fan-boy books, stories, or rumorpedia content.

'JT191' ( whoever you are ),
You lost any moral high ground you might have had when you started calling me a "fan boy". I may be many things, but sad to say that at 48 years old a 'boy' is no longer one of them. I suggest you try sticking to the topics at hand and drop the "fan boy" stuff.



Er, if the point was "the first use" of GTX, can you remind me again just who was the first to use it...?



Evidence of chicanery? By whom? The race organisers? JAF? The Military Industrial Complex?
No, it's ( further ) evidence that you are talking out of the top of your hat. There were race meetings and individual races where Fairlady 2000s, Hakosukas and Belletts ( not to mention many other makes and models ) competed in the same races and on the same tracks, as well as meetings and races where they did not. See the bottom of this page for some obviously faked-up 'proof'....



Oh dear, I'm outnumbered!

My dear fellow, I am NOT going to spell the word 'Romanisation' with a z any more than I am going to agree that the word itself is "American English". The point was that MISTER Shigeaki ASAOKA ( 浅岡 重輝 ) chooses to pronounce the kanji of his given name as 'Shi-ge-aki', and romanised it that way himself. This is nothing to do with machine translations, and nothing to do with the JAF website. I corrected you because - as an Isuzu fan - you might like to spell ( and pronounce ) his name correctly.



Tell you what, I'll blow up the images for you. You want to cross-check with the JAF website? Here's an idea; How about going by RACE DATE? If you think I'm going to sit here writing them all up in English English for you when you can easily check by event date, then you'd better think again.



Again, see below. If you want a bibliography, I will write one up for you. Fully expect you to dismiss for some reason or other though....



These quotes are classics, worth laying down like fine wines for future enjoyment. Thank you!



A large number of books about the Hakosuka in English? Where? Lead me to 'em! I'm a 'fan boy' and I want 'em!

Sorry to say that I don't know of a single book on the Hakosuka that has been written in the English language. Not even one in 'American English'.



That's a very shallow pool you swim in if you think you are one of the few people to have spotted JAF's online resources.. I was at the JAF headquarters in Shinagawa a few years ago now ( stop reading now if you feel a little bit nauseous ) and was shown round the JAF archive whilst I was doing some research. I think you'll find that a few other people have used it too. Not least on some European-based motorsport forums. There's a big wide world out there y'know....



On the contrary, I so very very do want you to go through 'my' ( LOL ) fan boy lists and match them up with the contents of the JAF website. Pretty please do.



That's some pretty woeful statistics work there. First of all, qualifying is a process that happens before a race. You can't add qualifying results to race results to double the figure! ( LOL ). A very large percentage of the "900" races ( your figure ) will have been races where the GT-R was not even eligible to race in, so how are they relevant? Stuff like FL500, Formula Junior, Stock Car races, F2, F3, etc etc. What kind of statistical analysis is this? It's just nonsense, like so much of the other stuff you've been coming up with.



Look below. These are Auto Technic and Auto Sport magazines from the period in question, and they contain race reports, results listings and photographs of the events in question. If you think that these reports are biased, or that they altered reality to fit in with some unknown conspiracy, or that the photos they contain are faked ( you know, like a Fairlady 2000 racing head-to-head with a Hakosuka ) then fire away. Like I've said before, if you want evidence for any particular race then just ask me and I'll see what I can magic up for you...

Some blow-ups for the hard of hearing.

Sources: 'Nissan Prince No.2' advertising ( all lies, obviously ) brochure, with fold-out posters and list of 41 'so-far' victories. Published 1971, and San-Ei Shobo 'Skyline 2000GT-R Memorial', ISBN4-86144-026-2, published 2005 ( but a "fan boy" comic, so worthless anyway ):

JT, really what is your agenda?
Leaving aside all the apparently sound evidence Alan has presented, what are you quibbling?
The use of a 3 letter acronym? Or just that the Belletts didn't get the same time in the limelight as the Skylines have? Or are you just slighted by a civil and resourceful response to your ethereal claims?



Anyway, even if the GT-R's following is many magnitudes greater than the car itself, this still does not put in question the fairly concrete historical record that they recorded at least 50 wins in the specified time period.

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