For years a giant, 15-foot-wide image of Nissan’s championship GTP ZX-Turbo prototype racer has been displayed at the automaker’s marketing agency’s offices in Los Angeles. That piece of history is now up for grabs, completely free, but the catch is you have to remove it from the property by the end of the week.
TBWA/Chiat/Day has been Nissan’s marketing agency since the late 1980s. They’ve overseen some of the most memorable aspects of the company’s US history, from the Ridley Scott Super Bowl commercial starring the Z32 300ZX to the 240Z restoration program to the Mr K Dream Garage ads of the 1990s. Their office near Venice Beach has also been used for events like the debut of the 370Z back in 2007.
Do a Google search on the office itself and you’ll find an uber-hip pioneer of open and creative workspaces that predates the typical Silicon Valley startup’s version by decades. It even has a 1960 Datsun VG223, an ultra-rare panel van sold in the US for one year only, front and center in the lobby. No one knows exactly how many were sold, but Nissan moved only 269 trucks total that year.
Anyway, in February Nissan announced they were consolidating their $750 million marketing operations on the east coast. That means the TBWA/Chiat/Day offices in Los Angeles are moving, and nobody wants to take the big Nissan GTP cutout with them.
It commemorates Nissan taking the IMSA-GTP constructor’s championship in 1989 and 1990 with the GTP ZX-Turbo race car, powered by a version of the VG30ET from a 300ZX. During the hard-fought victory, Nissan put an end to the Porsche 962’s dominance and 6-year winning streak that started with the series’ creation in 1983.
We were down at TBWA/Chiat/Day today and would have taken it for ourselves, but we have no place to put it. It’s about 15 feet wide and on plywood with with a lattice of wooden reinforcements on the reverse side. It’s not foldable and will likely require a trailer or box truck to move. It’s free for the taking, but if no one brings it home by the end of the week it’s going in the trash. If you’re interested, please comment and we will put you in touch with the right people.
UPDATE June 13, 2017, 2:45 pm: Thanks to these pics the good folks from the Nissan West Coast Regional office have claimed the cutout and taken it home.
This has Bryan Thompson written all over it! And, it’s even free and in his area.
The NTP cars were beasts! I remember watching GTP on TV and in person. The Nissans, and later Dan Gurney’s Toyota Eagle MkIIs, really cleaned house. Chip Robinson was quite the driver and the gorgeous Nissans were quite the cars. The amount of horsepower made by the heavily-turbocharged IMSA monsters, glued to the road by their ground effect aerodynamics, massive wings, and insanely wide tires were arguably one of the greatest eras in racing. (Although when something disturbed the aero, the GTP cars had a knack for taking flight, which led to some pretty dramatic crashes. The looks, the sound, the speed, and the thunder… arguably only the CanAm series and the beginnings of using ground effect Formula 1, along with that sports turbo, and V10 eras come close in terms of taking circuit racing to its absolute limit, although the modern WEC racers are pretty nuts, even if not as raucus or pretty.
Surely someone can put this sign to good use.
Quick, someone call the American Pickers!!
Nissan took its own sign. that may be the best possible result.