Last year our friend Victor Laury had a stroke and could not enjoy driving his collection of Datsuns. With the help of the very tight-knit Datsun Roadster community we helped auction his 1970 Datsun 2000 Roadster…and the winner was from Australia!

Victor’s roadster was on display at the 2012 Solvang Datsun Roadster Show where people could purchase tickets to enter the raffle in person or online. The winner was to be selected from a bowl of tickets by Victor himself.

Congratulations to winner Robert P. of New South Wales, Australia!  He is now the proud owner of a very special SRL. Rob also happens to be a true “Z” fanatic, owning a boosted VQ-swapped S30. Check out the custom fabricated intake manifold he artfully made!

 

The roadster was shipped from SoCal overseas to it’s new home:

 

Though Rob had never owned a roadster before, he immediately started making the roadster his own while keeping the spirit of Victor’s aesthetics/modifications intact. His choice of copper finished SSR Mk IIr’s carry on Victor’s appreciation of  JDM wheels.

 

Rob worked diligently to get the car roadworthy for Australian motoring and started enjoying the ride! Imagine driving a LHD vehicle down under…

 

He even visited expert Datsun Roadster specialist Lou Mondello for a dyno tune! The Solex-equipped U20 put down a healthy 79KW to the wheels:

Rob’s roadster was even featured in a recent TV commercial! When Victor owned this car it was featured in many JDM magazines…it appears that the limelight he enjoyed is strong. Here is the TV Commercial

If you want to see Rob’s transformation of his newest Datsun, follow the build on the world’s best Datsun Roadster website:
www.311s.org
Congrats again to Rob and our heart goes out to Victor who we hear is doing much better now. At the time of this post a Datsun Fun Run was being organized at his request!

 

 

Are you ready for another exciting evening at the Wednesday Night Drags? Join us at Sonoma Raceway on 8/7/13! We had a great turnout of Z cars at our last gathering, check it out HERE.
Interested in caravanning up with fellow Z car owners? The Bay Area Z Association has two meeting locations:

-For the San Mateo county members we are meeting @ 1pm @ Lowes – 720 Dubuque Ave, So San Fran, CA 94080

-For the South and East Bay members in Emeryville (Location TBD) @ 130pm

Anyone from the South Bay is also welcome to join us by meeting at shop at 1:30pm, more details in the following weeks!

***Z Car Garage will be closed this Friday, 7/19/13***

Z Car Garage is constantly looking for cool stuff to help fellow track junkies and newbies.  I came across Lapwise, a web-based tool to store and analyze your driving event data.

Lapwise is a cloud-based web application for analyzing motorsports data captured by GPS data-loggers. Upload your Harry’s LapTimer CSV or Trackmaster XLS data files and Lapwise offers several services:
– Stores events by track name and date
– Searchable and customizable dashboard
– Share to Facebook, Goolge+ and Twitter
– Multiple YouTube videos per event
– Trackmap overlays
– Speed and G-force analysis
– Interactive plots
– Detailed statistics

To allow you some testing, Lapwise offers a free promotional code for Z Car Garage Customers: 2013zcargaragep1

As another perk for Z Car Garage customers Lapwise will meet up to two drivers at an event in Northern California and spend the day as your personal data engineer and driving coach. The results of the day will be featured on the Z Car Garage blog. It is first-come, first-serve, so if you have an upcoming track-day contact Glynn, lapwise.com@gmail.com.

Please let us know what you think!
http://www.lapwise.com

The folks at HJCG are hosting another vintage Japanese car show 8/10/13 in San Leandro, CA. They hosted two fantastic car shows in the past including the Bayline and Shokuji J-Tin gatherings. See below for more info about the upcoming show with a very famous guest!

Historic J is proud to announce we will be hosting another very special event at the San Leandro Maria August 10, 2013. Location: 5 Monarch Bay Drive, San Leandro Marina CA .

For the first time ever here in the US our guest of honor from the world famous shop in Japan “Watanbe-San” owner of Rocky Auto will be attending our event.

Some of you might recognize him from the recent show “Retro-Kings”. He’s also known for the amazing cars that come out of his shop in Japan.

http://youtu.be/NGjI9R1XKEQ

Watanabe-San will have a booth where he will meet and greet and signing autographs. There will also be Rocky Auto merchandise that will available at the event.

Our guest of Honor will be judging all registered cars attending. Which gives you the opportunity to see how well you car matches up to Japanese standards. Trophies will be awarded to a select few based on categories which have been chosen by Watanabe-san himself.

There will also be media from well know Japanese magazines attending the event. Get the chance to have you car featured in one of their magazines.

Once again this is a once in a life time opportunity to meet Watanabe-san in person for the first time here on US soil.

For Registration go to http://historicj.com
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Thank You
HJCG