DATSUN 2000 GT, 1969

How pretty is this? Everyone remembers the 240Z, but a decade before it arrived, Datsun began fielding an escapist two-seater roadster. The early cars were cute but puny (though they actually pre-date the MG Midget), and it wasn’t until the mid-Sixties that things got interesting, particularly in the US:the 1.6-litre engine was fettled up to two litres, 135bhp and was an early adopter of a five-speed manual. Then it went racing. Peter Brock was a well-known face on the US competition scene – he was a key player at Shelby American and, among others, the Daytona Cobra Coupe was his idea – and having set up Brock Racing Enterprises he pitched to Datsun, still a young upstart in the US at the time (he’d had a deal with Toyota to race the 2000GT, but old boss Shelby stitched him up). Although the importer initially didn’t want to know, Brock managed to persuade parent company Nissan, via a contact in Japan, to send a pair of 2000 roadsters to BRE in secret. They won immediately, and this time Nissan’s US president, Yukata Katayama, was all over BRE. The team’s fabulous red, white and blue livery would become very familiar in American club racing in the early Seventies, on the 2000 roadster (sans windscreen), and the 510 ‘sedan’ – which won its class in the 1971 and ’72 Trans Am series with John Morton driving – but particularly the 240Z. Rarely did the “win on Sunday, sell on Monday” mantra have more impact than it did here. BRE and its iconic stripes helped put Datsun on the map. Jason Barlow