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THE FAIRLADY

The S211 launched Nissan into the sports car market, far ahead of its native competitors.

A few left hand drive model found buyers in America, but its 1-litre engine meant it was too small to pose a threat to British Sports cars arriving in the States by the shipload at that time. Indeed, records show that only 20 S211s were built!

The First Fairlady, the SP212. Although heavier than the S211, a 20% increase in engine capacity gave the new Fairlady better performance. The Fairlady name came from the Broadway musical My Fair lady, after Nissan’s President, Katsuji Kawamata, visited the United States. He thought people would relate the beauty of the leading lady in the play to the car!

The official designation was SP212 - the S standing for Sports, P for Bluebird (the model on which the chassis was based and L for Left hand Drive.

The models were developed through the 60’s, the SPL213.  The new and now familiar SP310, with the most sort after being the SP311, with the final model being the SR311. Engine size had grown from 1.0 litre to 2.0 litre

Throughout the 60’s Nissan toyed with the idea of building a personal sports car for the American market.  Having approached the company Albrecht Goertz was eventually employed by Nissan as a design consultant in May 1963.  Goertz recalled “The two seater concept wasn’t really my idea, bit I liked it.  I had just finished a stint at Porsche. if you look closely, you’ll the dimensions of the priginal 240Z and the Porsche 911 are about the same. Designs have to start somewhere and Porsche seemed right.

In fact, a number of cars were looked at for inspiration, including the Jaguar E-type and exotic machinery from Italy. In addition, Nissan wasn’t completely relying of Goertz.  Behind the scenes, key people in the States (such as dealers) were supplying feedback, allowing the management in Japan to have a far clearer idea of what was wanted.

It is very typical of the Japanese to be so thorough, and equally typical, to stay so quiet about their plans. It is not the done thing to seek individual credit - everything is classed as a team effort.  In the West, we assumed, wrongly, that we taught the Japanese everything because no single person will stand up and take a bow for work they have done.

Yoshihiko Matsuo was the Chief designer of the Fairlady Z project and detailed design work commenced in 1965.  Between 1965 and 1967 many proposal were dismissed before the final clay model, in late ‘67 was agreed upon.

The mechanics of the Z were taken from the Prince Motor Company that had been bought by Nissan in the mid 60’s.  The L20 was specified for the home market, to take advantage of the Japanese tax laws, this engine was used in the Gloria and Skyline models that were built by Prince at that time.  The 432 model using the DOHC straight six engine from the GTR at a later date.

The engine used for export was a 2.4 litre, straight six, SOHC (L24), this engine was a six cylinder version of the 1.6 litre SOHC four found in the 510 Bluebird.  The L16 was a four cylinder version of Mercedes-Benz SOHC six, which Prince had built under license before the Nissan takeover.

Yutaka Katayama. North America Sales Manager for Nissan and title by some as ‘The Father of the Z’, suggested dropping the Fairlady title for export markets as he didn’t think it was suitable for a muscular sports car.  Instead a designation based on engine size and the letter Z was agreed upon.

A lot of stories surround the adoption of the Z monogram, but it should be noted that the original plans were titled “Type Z”, as most of the other letters in the Roman Alphabet had been used on various projects. the letter ‘Z’ can stand for ‘Mugen’ in Japanese, which basically means ‘no limit’ or ‘infinity’, which sounded good in any language.