MY FAIR LADY
Collector owns rare Japanese beauty
It was happenstance that Mitch Jensen discovered a rare example of Japan’s first sports car — the Fair Lady roadster. He was 17 years old and visiting his brother who was sharing a home in North Vancouver with nine friends. There was a very rusty 1967 Datsun 1600 roadster in the garage that Mitch purchased for $ 300.
“It was a piece of junk and I bought a second car for parts, ending up with one car on the road and enough parts to build another,” he recalls. “This was my teenage car and now, 40 years later, I’m still working on them.”
The Datsun Fair Lady, so named because the head of the Nissan Motor Company was obsessed with the film My Fair Lady, was introduced softly into the North American market in the early ’ 60s. The factory produced only 102 roadsters in 196162, with all exported out of the country and most to dealers in San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Three of those firstissue Fair Lady models were sold in Vancouver. How Jensen ended up with two of the 102 examples is quite a story. Because of his continuing interest in the Datsun Fair Lady, he found an ultra- rare 1962 model being sold in Vancouver by a Japanese- Canadian owner in 2002. He knows of only a handful of survivors, one of which was sent back for museum display in Japan.
Only 52 Fair Lady roadsters were produced in the 1962 model year, so finding one of them would be the proverbial needle in a haystack.
“The owner considered it be too far gone to restore and it really was,” Jensen says.
Because of the rarity and historical value, he decided to attempt a resurrection of what was left of the car.
But the defining moment came with a call from Redi- Strip that had dipped the car in its rust removal acid tank only to discover there wasn’t enough left of the car to pull out.
“I thought it was bad, but not to that degree,” Jensen admits in recalling the low point of his attempts to save the ultra- rare sports car.
He continued on despite knowing that missing parts meant he would be unable to complete the job. Then fate intervened.
Jensen received a call from an enthusiast from Oregon who he had met at a vintage Datsun show in Portland. The man had been hiking with his wife 25 kilometres up a logging road outside Canby, Ore., when he came upon the remains of an early Fair Lady. It proved to be a 1960 model that was number 16 in the production of the 50 Fair Lady Spl212 roadsters produced in the first year. Jensen immediately hitched up his car trailer and went to Oregon to pull the remains out of the bush.
The early Spl212 car, although of the same body style, was rusted beyond any repair. But, because the back end had been buried in forest debris, he was able to use the fenders and trunk lid along with stainless side trim to complete the restoration of his “firstedition” Datsun Fair Lady 213.
As it turns out, Jensen’s 213 may by one of the earliest Fair Lady imports in North America, and quite possibly the only one that is restored to complete originality and fully operational.
His car was an enormous hit at an annual pre- 1974 Datsun show at Mount Shasta, Calif., shortly after the restoration was completed. Few, if any, of the participants had ever seen an original of this model. Fittingly, the show photo features Jensen’s Datsun Fair Lady 213 front and centre.
Datsun’s first postwar attempt at marketing a sports car was the DC- 3 introduced in 1952. The low- performance vehicle was built on a truck chassis and had just 25 horsepower. Only 50 cars were built.
By the late 1950s Nissan was beginning to export Datsun cars to the U. S. and Nissan advertising manager Yutuka Katayama pushed hard for a sports car to enhance the company’s image. He saw sales opportunities with thousands of British sports cars flooding the U. S. market.
When Mr. K, as he was known, was put in charge of imports to the lucrative U. S. west coast region, he wanted to test the market with the first Fair Lady sports cars off the assembly line.
Unfortunately, even though they resembled the popular British Austin Healey, the sluggish, low- horsepower, four- passenger roadsters were outdated. They were not well received and few were sold.
But, with feedback from Mr. K, the factory did a complete redesign and increased the horsepower. The Datsun 1500 Fair Lady was introduced at the New York Auto Show in the spring of 1962. The sports car did not look like other sports cars, but mimicked American cars with a big hood scoop, fins and the subtle use of chrome accents. It was an instant hit.
Through the 1960s, Nissan produced 40,000 sports cars with production ending in April 1970 when the wildly successful Z sports cars were introduced.
Jensen’s interest remains cemented to the early Datsun sports cars. He has a garage full of parts as well as two later model examples: a yellow 1969 Datsun 2000 powered by a Nissan SR20 engine with double overhead cams and 16 valves; and a red 1970 Datsun 2000 that he drove to the early Datsun sports car show in Mount Shasta this year.