Historic Nissan Rally Z to be restored
There’s an exclusive club of cars that have successfully been campaigned in both road-racing and rally series, and very few of them are Japanese. That makes the Nissan Fairlady Z’s success in multiple motorsports pursuits even more significant. The Nissan Restoration Club has decided to preserve a part of this heritage by bringing the Safari Rally Z back to running condition.
The Safari Rally Z’s short career saw two championship wins at the East African Safari Rally, in 1971 and 1973, where the car proved its mettle as the successor to the Datsun 510. The winner of the ’71 Safari Rally has been added to Nissan’s Heritage Collection and is scheduled to be restored this year. Powered by a 215-horsepower 2.4-liter OHC straight-six, this Safari Rally Z was piloted to victory by Edgar Hermann and Hans Schuller. Restoration is expected to be complete this December.
The Nissan Restoration Club was formed in 2006, and has restored eight other classic Nissan racers to date. The restorations go beyond the usual museum-display refurbishing, and are intended to end with fully operational classic racing vehicles. The group, which is formed of volunteers from Nissan’s R&D department, was responsible from bringing the 1964 Skyline, the 1958 “Fuji” and “Sakura” Datsun 210s and the 1947 Tama electric vehicle back to life.
