Category: Video

Winning: The Racing Life of Paul Newman

I’m not entirely sure how this film has not come to my attention before, as it came out five years ago. I finally watched it on Amazon a few days ago and, not only is it a solid documentary film which paints a good picture of the man himself and his passion for racing, it’s probably an essential watch for all Datsun freaks. Newman started out racing a Datsun 510 before moving to a 610, the an S10 Silvia (200SX) and finally numerous Z models from the S30 to the Z31. His passion for racing ruled his life and he continued to race into his old age, even taking pole position in his last race at the age of 82!
Needless to say, this film is packed with fantastic Datsun racing footage from end to end and features some of the big movers in the Datsun world back then, such as racing school owner, Bob Bondurant and BREs Trans-Am winning 510 driver ,John Morton. You can pay to watch the full film on YouTube, or if you have Amazon Prime you can see it there for free. Check out the film trailer below…

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Project: Silvia

It’s been a nice sunny day so I decided to haul the Silvia out of the shed and make a short walk-around video. I finally got the Silvia MOT’d and UK registered just before winter and given the various unpainted areas of the body, I decided that it would be foolish to use it on the nasty, salty winter roads. So it’s been laid up the the garage all winter and of course, now that the good weather has finally returned and the roads are clean and dry, I can’t drive it anywhere because we’re under pandemic lockdown! Gah!

Sunny Skids

A Datsun 120Y four door wouldn’t be the first weapon of choice for most skid enthusiasts. From my experience with my Datsun 510 back in the day, short wheelbase cars like this are pretty tricky to drift, especially at speed, which is why I ended up with an S13 instead. Here’s Aussie Logan Waterhouse skidding in style in his KA24DE powered 120Y… and making it look so easy…

For more, check out Logan Waterhouse Drift on Facebook

Datsun Promotional Film

Plenty to see in this Nissan promo film for the early 1970s. Nissan were riding high on a decade of success both in the marketplace and on the race track, and they weren’t afraid to tell the world all about it. Plenty of excellent period shots of the Tokyo Motorshow, the East African Safari Rally and even some footage of the R382 in action. Also there’s loads of testing and development footage. A great watch for anyone interested in Datsun history…

Tokyo in Tennessee

Back in the early 80s, the US car industry was really suffering. The trickle of imports from Japan in the early 1960s had turned to a torrent by the end of the 70s. Domestic car sales were taking a beating and with US auto workers starting to be laid off, a backlash was forming. Despite this Nissan made the controversial move of trying to address both its desire to sell its cars to Americans, while still providing US workers with employment, by building a Nissan factory in Smyrna, Tennessee. This film by 60 Minutes from back in 1982 takes a look at the project, and in particular, the training of the workers, so that they could build cars like the Japanese workers…

Nissan Type 70

Nissan’s Type 70 arrived on the Japanese car market in 1937 and was quite a departure for the company as it was considerably bigger and more luxurious than anything they had previously sold. Clearly they were pretty proud of this new car and produced this charming silent film, which remarkably for 1937, was in colour!

Of course the Type 70 wasn’t actually designed by Nissan at all…

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