I'm Amy Haugland I'm Alex Haugland and
this is our 1972 Datsun 240Z [music] Datsun began life building Japanese Market
versions of British cars in the 1930s continuing in that tradition after World War II when the
parent company Nissan decided to enter the US market in the 1960s they chose to use the Datsun
name as it was not associated with the material support that Nissan had provided the Japanese
military in World War II the Datsun 240Z came out in 1969 as Nissan's Grand Touring Car in a
market dominated by British and Italian sports cars Datsun was already selling sporty open top
roadsters in the US market but sales worked as competitive with the established British and
Italian offerings it's elegant design nimble handling strong inline 6-cylinder engine
affordable price and above all incredible reliability allowed it not only to define
a market segment for Japanese sports cars in the United States but to also herald the
end of many of the European brands that had previo
usly controlled that market thus the
same car which was sold as a Nissan in Japan was sold as a Datsun in the United States
as typical of Japanese cars the 240Z and its successors received continual improvements and
refinements throughout production the car was hugely successful and had continued to inspire an
ongoing family of Z cars for Nissan with six more generations of cars following the original design
needless to say it sold incredibly well with over 164,000 240 Z's alone thus they c
ompletely
dominated over the likes of MG, Triumph, and Fiat all of which pulled on the US market within
3 years of the end of the first series of Z cars welcome to this episode of Everyday to Exotic join us as we share some of the unique
vehicles in our diverse collection of exotic and everyday cars s driving each
car provides a different experience each with their individual strengths and weaknesses
we'll take you through those characteristics together both up close in the studio and
whil
e driving them on the beautiful roads of Oregon finally we'll individually award
points for each episode's car to determine where it ranks in the Haugland collection
we're glad you're here for this episode of everyday to exotic oh do you want me to put my
arms out I'm just doing it partly because that way I'm not just going I'm standing here
gesturing we're being gesturing is good the Datsun 240Z borrows a lot of elements from
the Jaguar e type from the long swooping Hood with its power bul
ge up over the top to the cut
off cam tail the back so the first few years of the Datsun 240Z had vents actually in the rear
hatch what those vents did is that they allowed air theoretically to come through the car when
the windows are down and escape out the back the problem was they also happened to let exhaust
fumes come into the car and smelled absolutely horrible so in order to fix that they redesigned
the car slightly and they put vents in the side pillars here and put these little em
blems over
the top of the hole to kind of hide that it's there and so that changed on both sides I love
the redesigned emblem with the little Z it's very aesthetically pleasing so one part of the
chrome trim on this car that is not actually original was dealer installed you see them on
almost every car out of the 1970s that they would basically sell to people as an upgrade
in order to protect the car from door dings from people just slamming their door in the
side of it and so it's a littl
e rubber strip in aluminum molding with with caps many many
cars ended up getting them installed even in the 80s the downside with it is to install them
you're drilling holes through the nicely painted body of the car sometimes they lead to rust
sometimes they lead to other issues when you restore the car you now have these holes to fill
and the rubber on these weirdly to shrink on a lot of cars and so you'll frequently have little
gaps at the beginning and end or whatever as they get fitte
d so this car they look fairly good they
were on there for the beginning I'm going to leave them there another thing that's aesthetically
pleasing is these headlights how they're inset which is also very similar to the way that the
Jaguar E-type was a lot of people will now get covers and put them on over the top which was how
the original e types were unfortunately in 19 72 those kinds of headlight covers were illegal so
those don't come stock so the wheels on this car are actually the ori
ginal steel wheels with the
correct 1972 a hub caps you tend not to see that that often at this point most people have swapped
these out to alloy wheels get a bigger range of tire sizes things like that but this is actually
how these cars came so another thing on this is that this being a 1972 it was before a lot of the
bumper regulations came in and you'll see on the later generations of these cars these beautiful
Chrome bumpers are gone replaced with these giant bumpers that stick out lik
e park benches in order
to meet 5 mph crash safety standards at the time it's very very sad they stick out like par PES
they do if you look it's like this I from the front of the car I do like the it's very very
sad though should be there well it is very sad here we are at the aforementioned cam tail notice
the gorgeous bumpers back here as well this back was always black didn't matter what color your
the rest of your car was this is black so other features you'll see back here is the facto
ry
installed power antenna the rear hatch opens simply with a push button and lifts holds itself
up with a good shock the shocks eventually fail you replace them then it stays up again otherwise
you have a golf club back here or something that you just Jam in to hold it up like everyone else
does so the storage space in here is actually fairly good for the most part you've got a nice
open compartment in the front here the only real downside is the suspension designed on this is
a Chapman s
trut which requires that the top of the shock be mounted pretty high up into the car
in order to make it operate properly it's nice and light and a good suspension system but what
it means that you have these tall towers in the back that somewhat limit your cargo space
one of the big advantages of it however is that potentially you could have things where
it's like if you have a large object here it keeps things from going forward and running into
you if you have to stop suddenly you'll not
ice that the aesthetically pleasing front upholstery
continues all the way through the back they didn't skimp at all including wrapping the strut towers
with the really lovely patterned vinyl that's original neighborhood my moment I and now on the engine bay so nothing in here at all would surprise a
British mechanic in a lot of ways this definitely reveals a lot of the character of what would have
been the origins of dodson's copies of British cars so you've got an inline six-cylinder engin
e
it is a pretty nice engine overall but kind of similar layout to what you would typically find
on most British inline sixes you do have two Japanese copies of su carburetors feeding it that
is a copy of the standard carburetor that was on almost every British car from like the 1920s up
so very very standard layout here where you get some changes however is that instead of this being
a push rod motor like what was in the Contemporary Triumph TR6 It's actually an overhead cam engine
and so
that is really an example of Dotson taking a design that they've been building for years
and improving it and iteratively improving it making them better and better and better other
interesting features you'll find in the engine bay is the fact that on both sides you have flaps like
this this side it gives you good access to your battery on the other side it gives you access to
your washer bottle and your clutch Reservoir this engine has a mechanical fuel pump which operates
here directly
off the top of the head so it's running off the cam drive and the thing I tend not
to like about some of these cars is the mechanical fuel pump because I have so many cars and drive
them if they sit it takes a while to reime the system this one doesn't seem too bad but I prefer
a mechanical fuel pump that also has a little manual lever that you can usually operate in order
to basically prime it by hand rather than cranking the engine over this still primes pretty well on
its own so I'm not
going to worry about it that much another rather cool feature actually in the
engine bay of most of these cars actually is the little trouble light that's built in it has a nice
little switch on the back lights up theoretically illuminates the generally most useless side of
the engine here I have access to spark plugs can see that and see the oil filter but not really
much else that I typically would be dealing with however it was designed so that you could pull it
out and when it's not sho
rting itself out randomly it will light up and if your cord were long enough
you could probably even hang it off of the hood so you could actually see in here if you had to work
on the side of the road at night as is mine has a tendency to act up a little bit as you can tell
and it's all in the wiring down here in the light itself so I'll turn it off and put it back it'll
keep you for getting stranded on the side of the road except it'll leave you stranded on the side
of the road when you'r
e try and count on it yeah most car manufacturers tend to put their name on
the engine itself somewhere you'll see Lamborghini on Lamborghini engines you'll see Ferrari all
over Ferrari engines in this case because of the fact that everywhere else in the world this is a
Nissan it says Nissan ohc overhead cam it's one of the few places that you obviously see the Nissan
origins of this car rather than necessarily Datsun so on this side of the car we have our brake
master which is boosted and
it's two circuits as I believe was required by the law by 1972
front brakes on this are disc rear brakes are drums pretty common for sports cars at
this time same thing as what was on an MGB things like that a few of the higher end
cars were four-wheel discs but a lot of them were actually just disc and drum under here you
can also see our washer Reservoir and our clutch master and here we are in the interior this is one
of our favorite color combinations white exterior with the red and som
etimes a little bit of black
interior materials in here are vinyl and plastic for the most part this is how you know we're
in the 1970s it's uh moving away from the 19 60s leather and wood and vinyl the steering wheel
however is still wood this was incredibly popular up through the 1970s and into the 80s especially
in sports cars so these are the original vinyl seats they're still in really good shape for the
most part and you know a few little flaws but uh because they're vinyl which doesn
't breathe
the way that leather does if you get air in there it's not going to come out so this has these
little vents here and here and here here so that if you do get air in the seats and you lean back
you're leaning against the padding of the seat and not against an airbag the gauges are nice and big
easy to read and unlike many of our British cars we have a clock that actually works the climate
controls and the original factory radio are all right in the middle which makes them really e
asy
to access for both the driver and the passenger so they could lead to some arguments there they
don't with us the climate control works really well in the 1970s they started having stronger
fans again none of that haunted air conditioning and so this is a really good car in almost any
kind of weather you don't want to drive it in the snow but otherwise you're good one of the
really convenient and interesting features of this car is the everything switch you have
over here it has your h
eadlights it has your wipers it has your windshield washer the only
problem is is that if one thing goes wrong in that everything switch everything has gone wrong
here's the ashtray standard issue in the 1970s pretty much everybody smoked of course later
on we uh wound up with this being this is where you keep your change back when we all carried
cash nowadays perfectly fits a can of soda we use it as an impromptu cup holder because you
really don't have cup holders in these cars visibility
in this car is excellent you have
fairly small blind spots I like that I can pull the seat far enough forward to reach
the pedals and still be in a comfortable driving position that's not always possible
for me the seat belts are unique uh and I mean that in the least affectionate way
possible they have a bit where you can remove the shoulder belt and just have a lap
belt it adjusts both across the lap and and here but not very well and once you get it
adjusted for you if you're the only
person driving this car it's awesome it's excellent if
you want to switch drivers it is a pain in the backside one of the things that I love about
this interior is you will never forget that you are driving a Datsun 240Z dots in
here the floor mats say 240Z the petals say Datsun there's little Z's everywhere
you've got your Z on your seat belt got our glove box again we're reminded it's
a Datsun 240Z we mention that it just opens like that it's basically a cardboard
box inside but you can
lock it if you want to we have a lot of cars in our collection overall this is one of my favorites
both to sit in and to look at [music] so this is the Datsun 240Z for me
this was love at first drive I got in the seat started her up and it felt like
this was a car that wanted to go play with me in a lot of ways this really is a fantastic
little sports car I mean it's not the fastest that we have it's not the most sporty sports car
it's not necessarily something most people are going to iden
tify as being a high performance
car to the same extent as some of the others but I mean you can really see why this dominated
the market in the 70s I mean it was such a good basic usable car that happens to also be
able to comfortably go 120 Miles per Hour it's very responsive the accelerator is quite
responsive so you do have have to be a little careful and I'm a huge fan of straight 6 engines
I mean most of our higher performance cars from Europe are straight sixes there's a few V8s
and
things and v12s but all the V12 is is two straight sixes stuck together so it's the best
of both worlds but straight sixes tend to have lots of torque at the bottom end they have
very linear acceleration they're smooth they run beautifully also nice light clutch which
I like because it's easier for people like me with small we need muscles to deal with so I mean
this car originally was an automatic so we put in the 5-speed manual which I think is a really good
fit If This Were a manual car
originally it would have been a four-speed the advantage of a 5speed
over the four-speed is that the 5-speed actually matches the final drive ratio in the rear end that
the automatic had so actually it me that we put it in the speedometer and all that worked just right
out of the box we didn't have to change anything on that end everything stayed working just the
way it should so it was a pretty easy install and way that they designed these cars there was
even a place to hang the clutch pe
dal and it stole all the Hydraulics it was very very easy to do I
think part of what I like about this is in many ways it also feels like a British car I mean again
you've got sort of that very British style engine and everything it's to the point where it has
Su carberureators it it behaves like a British car it starts like a British car the choke works
like a British car it really tends to behave that same way but then unlike most British cars of the
1970s it was reliable and it wasn't ve
ry expensive to get the car worked on it wasn't like a you know
it's not a Ferrari it's not a Ferrari rep por BMW or anything like that yeah it's a sports car but
it's not a luxury sports car yeah the other thing is that the Japanese have always been very good at
iterative Improvement it's like take a design and make it better one little bit at a time what they
did is they took British cars they were decent cars at the time in the 1950s and the Japanese
basically took that design and made i
t better and better and better I mean this is the kind of car
that I feel like I could just oh well I'm going out for the day I need to run a couple of errands
and I want to have fun while I'm doing it I could just get in it and go I don't have to do anything
special to it it's not precious at all it's just you turn the key and it's ready understand how
to take another it kind of helps that it's a car that a lot of people know and have seen you
tend to get a lot of thumbs up in this yes but
you don't get the oh my gosh what's that as much
people know what it is y but there are people who will stop you and go oh I used to have a 240Z it
was really awesome here are some of the memories I have of it that's another one that the stories
tend to end with I never should have sold that car [music] what a beautiful drive and now it's time for the
Haugland score here's how it works Alex and I have individually rated the car in five categories
each with a rank of 0 to 10 then we add our
scores together to give us the final Haugland score after
we combine our scores the results go up on the board so starting with performance I gave the car
an eight it handles well it drives very neutrally the suspension's great it really fits in sort of
the idea of what some people call it as a poor band z type it has a lot of the characteristics
that make any type of great car as well but in an affordable package and something I can drive
every day I also gave it an eight for very similar
reasons I found this a very easy car to drive
because it was so responsive to everything that I asked for style I also gave it an eight it
feels elegant but it's also really fun and I gave it a seven I like the styling of the
car it's pretty nice but in a lot of ways it's also kind of derivative it's like some
of the other cars that came out of Britain before it it doesn't necessarily stand out
as being something revolutionary in design so drivability it's actually to me one of the
most i
mportant things on any car is how often can I use it how comfortably can I drive this
anytime anywhere for whatever I want to do I gave this car a nine because this is easily a
car I could see basically having as your only car not just your only sports car not just your
only classic but I could see it still being even your only car I'd say the only downside is the
classic problem with any kind of hatchback car like this in many ways is I can't put something
in the trunk and not have visible
otherwise it's an absolutely wonderful car as long as you
don't need to see like five people in it that's really interesting cuz I gave it a seven and my
reasoning is very similar because the clutch is really easy it's fun to drive I wouldn't worry
too much about where I parked it but I wouldn't take this on multiple errands for instance and
I probably wouldn't take it grocery shopping and it's also not at all climate controlled back there
so you don't want to leave things in the Sun for i
nstance for significance I gave it an eight it's
a fairly significant car in the American sports car market as in it's directly responsible
for the loss of popularity for British and Italian cars at the time it's also a fairly
significant car in our collection in that we don't have very many japanese cars I also
gave it an eight and it's sort of a Melancholy score in many ways because of the fact that
it really does spell the end of a lot of the other cars that I love in our collection
it
would have been interesting to see what those companies would have done in the 80s and
things if they have continued in the US market especially with most of the American cars being
frankly kind of boring it also really launched the Japanese sports car period so not just for
Dawson but for Mazda for others as well coming after finally for Delight I gave it a six
a lot of people enjoy the Dotson a lot of people have stories with them at the same
time I don't think they Inspire the awe that s
ome of the other cars tend to do it's
not the ooh ooh there's a Datsun as much as ooh ooh there's a Ferrari or what the heck is
that so that to me is usually a huge part of what inspires Bo light and I gave it a seven
for similar reasons you get a lot of positive acknowledgement but it's not the ooh you know
however I love it so it gets more points from me as a I smile every time I look at it and
I absolutely love the Driving Experience so adding everything together that brings
us to a tot
al of 76 for 1972 Datsun 240Z 76 feels like a really good score for this car
this has definitely been my favorite car in our collection to drive so far there are quite a
few good cars though that we have yet to get to I think there are also quite a few much worse
cars to get to but we'll have fun with those two definitely thank you for watching this episode
of Everyday to Exotic our goal is to create a show that's as much fun for you to watch
as it is for us to make so please comment let us
know what you like what you'd like to
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collection follow us on Instagram @haugland collection we'll see you on the next episode
of Everyday to Exotic okay see you la
ter bye [music]
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