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Road & Track

BRE Nissan 370Z & Datsun 240Z - Special Feature
Forty years may separate these two Zs, but they both celebrate the BRE Datsun 240Z’s historic SCCA National Championships in 1970 and 1971.
By Andrew Bornhop / Photos by John Lamm

July 14, 2010

Slideshow >> Video >> Most people familiar with Brock Racing Enterprises immediately think of John Morton and the Datsun 510. With good reason. The boxy red, white and blue No. 46 BRE car won the SCCA 2.5-liter Trans-Am championship in 1971 and 1972. And the affordable 510 adapted so well to racing that scads of them, many painted like original BRE cars, popped up at racetracks around the country. Even today you’ll see the occasional 510 road racing, often in BRE-inspired paint.

Before the 510, however, Peter Brock and crew—who were already campaigning Datsun S2000 Roadsters in SCCA club racing—hit the track with the sleek 240Z…and with great success. Aided by Datsun’s West Coast President Yutaka Katayama, BRE obtained an early Z (chassis No. 492) in January 1970 and turned it into an SCCA C Production race car at their shop in El Segundo, California. This No. 46 Z, in fact, graced the cover of our November 1970 issue. James T. Crow reported on the build of the car and concluded that the new racing Z was well on its way to doing well. “Watch for it,” he wrote. “It will be worth seeing.”

Indeed it was. This was the heyday of production-based amateur road racing in America, and at the SCCA’s 1970 American Road Race of Champions held at Road Atlanta (the precursor to the Runoffs), Morton’s C Production BRE Z won easily, defeating the likes of Bob Tullius and Lee Mueller in Triumph TR-6s, Alan Johnson in a Ginther-prepared Porsche 914-6 and Bob Sharp, who was building 240Zs out of his shop in Connecticut.

Quite a debut for the BRE car and the sleek new Z in general, which swept the top three positions that fall day at Road Atlanta. And the following year, it seemed that the harder the Zs pushed, the more the Triumphs and Porsches broke. At the 1971 ARRC, two BRE 240Zs (Morton and Dan Parkinson) were on the front row, alongside Sharp. Allan Girdler, reporting in our March 1972 issue, described Morton’s winning drive: “[He] put on an exhibition, leading all the way in his routine madman style and power always fully on, into each corner at seemingly impossible speed, out with wildly spinning tires, using all the road in the process.”

All told, Datsun Zs went on to win 10 straight SCCA C Production titles, but that 1971 national championship marked the end of the BRE Z era. Brock—with Z sales booming and 510s languishing on dealer lots—had decided to go professional racing with the latter in the SCCA’s 2.5-liter Trans-Am championship.

And sadly, the original championship-winning No. 46 BRE Z was destroyed in 1973. Brock had handed the car back to Datsun after the 1971 season, who in turn gave it to Parkinson, the former BRE driver who subsequently totaled the car in a rollover crash at Phoenix.

Although Parkinson, who Morton says is very fast, has never publicly admitted writing off the historically significant No. 46 car, one man who knows it’s true is Ron Carter, an avid Datsun vintage racer who’s built the beautiful BRE 240Z featured here, which is considered by many to be the most faithful re-creation there is of the original No. 46 BRE 240Z.

“I loved the research; it was so much fun,” explains Carter, who said he was the only guy crazy enough to undertake such an historically accurate re-creation of Morton’s car. He methodically started collecting parts in 2002, beginning with a clean 1972 Z chassis that he had media-blasted down to the bare metal and stitch-welded.

An early fuel door and rear hatch gave the Z the proper 1970 look. BRE spoilers went on front and rear, as did aerodynamic headlight covers. The rollbar was copied from that of a BRE 240Z pace car used at Ontario Motor Speedway. As for the strut suspension, Carter wanted to keep it as original as possible but still be competitive in vintage racing. In went Hypercoil springs, Tokico Illumina 5-way-adjustable shock absorbers, camber plates and adjustable rear toe. And with the large anti-roll bars and sticky Hoosier DOT race tires, size 205/50ZR-15, Carter thought it prudent to reinforce the Z’s suspension pickup points.

Under the hood is an original BRE-built L24 2.4-liter, a sohc inline-6 purchased from a vintage racer who was upgrading his Z to a larger engine. This Z was quite a find, as it supplied Carter not just with the powerplant but also the original triple Solex/Mikuni carburetors, the Nissan Competition intake manifold and original American Le Mans magnesium wheels. The gearbox is also from Nissan Comp, an early 5-speed overdrive unit (with “medium-close” ratios) that sends power to an R190 limited-slip differential with 4.44:1 gearing.

Differences from the original No. 46 are numerous but not that major, done mostly for added performance or safety but without changing the simple, honest character of the car. The ATL fuel cell, by vintage rules, is isolated by a bulkhead, and the original rollbar has been built into a full cage with door bars. What’s more, the rear brakes are discs, whereas the original BRE Z raced with finned aluminum drums. All told, Carter’s BRE Z weighs about 2100 lb., and the engine, redlined at 7000 rpm, puts out around 240 to 250 bhp. The headers, of note, are an exact copy of the original BRE exhaust on the blue No. 3 BRE 240Z, the sole remaining true BRE Z in existence.

Given that it’s the 40th anniversary of both the production Z and the BRE Z’s first championship, Nissan helped us take Carter’s vintage BRE replica out to Spring Mountain Motorsports Ranch for some lapping fun. Making things even sweeter, we’d get to drive it back to back with Nissan’s one-off 370Z BRE Tribute car, a modern Z done up in a paint scheme that pays homage to those folks who put the Z on the sports-car racing map.

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