Interested in a fun cruise through beautiful backroads in March? ZONC fun runs are great and we have enjoyed running them many times. You can find more details on the official Cruise Flyer and also on the ZONC homepage.

Congratulations to Scott Smith for winning the SPEC Z racing series with the GreenZ!

After earning his SCCA license Scott started competing in the SPEC Z series with his silver race car and eventually prepared the GreenZ to finish the season.  Scott had a small team consisting of himself and his sidekicks Al and J. You could catch these three practicing at open track days like Thunderhill or Laguna Seca trying to dial the car in and find weak spots(see wheel bearing failure below!).

 

Here’s a video clip from a SPECZ race at Thunderhill:

Scott would like to thank Z Car Garage, William’s, CityTech, Evil Genius, NISMO and BFG. Great driving Scott, we are proud of you!

We had an enormous turnout on today’s fun run to the coast. I think we left ZCG with a caravan of 20 cars of all years and makes. A few more cars joined us in downtown Saratoga and we were all off to enjoy some twisty roads up HWY9 and Skyline. Though it was cold, the sunny sky and great visibility provided some impressive views of the Bay Area and coastline:

At our first vista point off Skyline I noticed all of the late-model machinery in our caravan including Eric’s FR-S, Meghan’s Z33, Kurt’s C5 Z06, a Z34, Michael’s Vortech Mustang, and Scott’s Z32TT

I was so happy to see how many vintage Datsuns showed up too! We had 9 Datsun roadsters, 2 510 coupes, 1 510 wagon, 2 S30s and a’77 S130. From left to right: Mike’s ’68 SR20(he drove from SoCal!), David’s 67.5 SRL, Mike B’s ‘67.5 SPL, Rob’s 67.5 SRL, my 67.5, Eddie W’s ’66 SR20, Stacey’s ’70 SRL, Ken’s blown KA SRL, Tony’s flared turbo L-series 510, Matt G’s Turbo KA 510, Matt D’s 510 wagon, Rico’s 240z, Randy M’s 240z and Lou’s RHD FairladyZ:

Whoa! Now that is alot of Datsuns! You know you are driving something special when the Ferrari and Porsche guys whip out their fancy cameras to take a picture your DATSUN 🙂

We motored on past Alice’s restaurant and headed west to the coast via 84 to Pescadero beach. 84 is one of my favorite roads with endless turns. After lunch at Duarte’s Tavern remaining drivers drove up Pescadero Rd and back to Skyline/Hw9 for one last stop and a nice photo-op:

Huge thank you to everyone that braved the chilly morning to come out and enjoy the ride today. With spring and summer around the corner you can count on more fun runs to come!

Our Datsun friend Tony F. is visiting from Georgia and we thought it would be a good excuse to take our Datsuns out for a drive and enjoy the ride with him. Let’s do a quick fun run this Sunday morning, 2/10!

We will start at Z Car Garage in San Jose and drive up HW 9, 35 and take La Honda to the coast. From there it’s less than a mile to Duarte’s Tavern for lunch/brunch.
More twisties back home via Pescadero Rd.

Meet/Start: Z Car Garage: 140 Archer St, San Jose 95112
When: Sunday, 2/10 at 9am

Route:
http://goo.gl/maps/iNSyX

We had a magnificent track day experience at Laguna Seca on Sunday with City Tech. Big thanks to Patrick Chio for hosting a top-notch event. If you are looking for a safe, affordable trackday with maximum track time then check out their event schedule for 2013.
Datsun Roadsters Rule!

 

Rob and I were completely stoked at the idea of driving our roadsters together through the world famous corkscrew at ‘Seca…this track is incredible and Doing It In A Datsun makes it even better!  We gathered several ZCG cars and friends to come out and enjoy the opportunity. The group was quite diverse: Josh-’72 VW, Walt-GTR, Jeff V-Mustang GT, Wade-Lemons 240z, Glynn-Porsche 993, Scott B-G35 sedan, Allen B-Vortech Z33, and Ken in his newly Stoptech bbk’d WRX:

 

When we arrived early Sunday am the track was wet from fog and drizzle.  Despite the conditions we removed our tops and drove to our heart’s content. Eventually the grey sky turned blue around noon and the track dried out for plenty of grip.

 

Words can’t describe how much fun driving Laguna Seca is. I could wax poetic for days.  First timers Jeff (Mustang) and Ken (WRX) are hooked:

 

You just need to come out with us next time and see for yourself!

 

Josh, Rob and I wanted to capture our vintage cars running the track so we all mounted GoPro cameras from different vantage points. You can see how we had a blast staying together and mixing it up(there might be an impromptu drag race in there). The trunk mounted/rear facing camera on Sora Blue really gives you a perspective of the elevation drop through the corkscrew…make sure you select the “1080p HD” option, crank up the volume and enjoy!

 

 

Another fun part of track days are ride-alongs. Walt geve me a ride in his GT-R and I was blown away by it’s acceleration and grip coming out of turns. Look for in-car video soon! As with all track days cruising the paddock reveals some high dollar and very cool machinery. It is always neat to see driver’s clever attempts of evading the sound station 🙂 Here are some highlights, including several Z’s, a F20C-powered AE86, and lots of S2ks, more pictures in the gallery of course:

So thus ends the epic track day at Laguna Seca. Thank you to everyone that joined us and caravanned down from the shop. Another thank you to Patrick at City Tech. We look forward to more track days!

Check the gallery for more great pictures!

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