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Once partnered with Nissan, BRE’s hard-won experience and carefully developed internal speed secrets were no longer private. The shop and team had to be open to all who might want to be part of Katayama’s new motorsports program. By contract, everything BRE learned in competition had to be shared with other teams, who would emulate the team’s success and expand corporate visibility nationwide.

There was also a very subtle but important cultural aspect to BRE’s relationship with Nissan. The rules of Japanese business etiquette weren’t easy for the team’s members to acquire, as there was no school of interpersonal diplomacy available to impart to them what gestures, language or decisions were acceptable.

Any action, like cheating, that might be understood in America as legally embarrassing if discovered, simply wasn’t possible. There could never be any hint of impropriety. Any such infraction, for a Japanese sponsor, would bring dishonor and “loss of face.” It would also be a personal disgrace for the head of the company and would create corporate and even national shame.

Manufacturers Partner With Privateers

In 1970, when the 240Z was introduced, American road racing was in the midpoint of a transitional era concerning marketing and advertising. Previously, the sport had been almost entirely amateur and publicly invisible–an SCCA-governed activity for elite enthusiasts.

Now it was slowly awakening to the reality of teams with paid professional drivers and contracts to develop production automobiles for manufacturers whose marketing departments understood the value of success on the race track.

The beginning, perhaps, came in the fall of 1962, when Carroll Shelby’s first professionally prepared Cobra roadster confronted a four-car team of Zora Arkus-Duntov’s personally selected Corvette Stingray drivers at Riverside Raceway. That display of professionalism opened the door for automakers’ American offices to begin supporting SCCA privateers who showed promise.

By 1970, Porsche North America was actively sponsoring a couple of two-car teams using its fast, mid-engined 914-6s with professional hotshoes on the East and West Coasts. These operations were run, in turn, by veteran international racing luminaries Bob Holbert and Richie Ginther.

Meanwhile, British-Leyland’s New York office started backing two independent Triumph efforts: Bob Tullius’s slick Group 44 team out of Falls Church, Virginia, on the East Coast and veteran racer and development engineer Kas Kastner on the West Coast. Toyota USA used the same strategy to introduce and promote its stunningly beautiful new 2000GT in America, contracting three-time LeMans-winning team manager Carroll Shelby to field a two-car effort in 1968. The brass ring for these manufacturers: the prestige and unquestioned sales advantage of winning a national championship. And they would all compete directly.

Like Porsche’s 911 coupes, its even faster 914-6 roadsters, and Triumph’s equally impressive TR6s, Datsun’s new 240Z had all been assigned by the SCCA’s contest board to the C Production class. And it was into this seething cauldron of top pros and big money that BRE and Katayama dove to challenge the finest American “amateurs” in SCCA production car racing with Nissan’s untested 240Z.




This first really openly accepted season for pros in factory-backed race cars suddenly became major news in the sport. Datsun’s national reputation was on the line, as was Katayama’s position internally within Nissan. If the 240Z didn’t perform as expected, his credibility would suffer. Within BRE, the pressure was on.

As Delivered

Since the SCCA had intelligently divided the U.S. into several divisions in an effort to decrease travel costs for privateers, it was only necessary for a regional team to accumulate enough points to win one of the top three positions in its specific division to qualify for the national championships. For this reason, both Porsche and Triumph were sponsoring more than one team. At the last moment, Porsche even added a third effort out of Kansas for Bob Hindson.

Likewise, Nissan backed more than one 240Z race team. BRE’s counterpart on the opposite coast was top eastern Datsun dealer and club racer Bob Sharp. He was given the very first 240Z in the country–and it did not fare well on its first outing. The engine failed suddenly and catastrophically, and the cause seemed to be an unsolvable mystery.

With only a single destroyed engine to analyze, it was impossible for Sharp’s crew to discern if the problem was an engineering anomaly or simply a mistake in preparation. Queries to the factory describing the event were met with silence.

BRE’s first 240Z arrived several weeks later, shortly before the first regional event on the Pacific Coast. Having the car ready in time seemed almost impossible, but veteran crew chief Mac Tilton led the BRE team through late hours every night to prep and thoroughly test their new Z before its public debut. Had they not done so, that first race would have been a huge embarrassment for Nissan and Mr. K.



Explaining what put Nissan in this situation requires a wider look. Unlike the high-revving Prince Z 432 engine intended for the Japanese-market Fairlady race car, the 240Z’s new American-market, six-cylinder engines had never been designed for or even expected to see competition.

Nissan’s management, including Katayama, was completely unaware that American racing rules required the use of engines and components as delivered in their production cars and sold to the public. Unlike most international racing regulations, the SCCA’s didn’t allow special, factory-built racing engines or components.

Since Nissan had simply assumed that the Prince engine would be used in America for racing, the new L-series was never tested at high rpm. Without realizing the situation, Nissan had put its reputation–along with Mr. K’s–at serious risk.

Bad Vibrations

BRE’s sage engine guru, 87-year-old Art Oehrli, had been building and testing engines almost his entire life. Before being coaxed to head up BRE’s engine development facility in El Segundo, Oehrli ran Champion Spark Plug Co.’s dynamometer test cell in Long Beach for several years.

His depth of experience with every type of racing engine, from dirt track circle burners to Indy 500 mills to huge Can-Am V8s, was an invaluable resource. It allowed him to first discern the new L24’s almost fatal flaw: an elusive high-rpm, third harmonic vibration.



This condition was so subtle, destructive and unexpected that at first no one on the BRE crew understood what had occurred. Since this high-rpm vibration phenomenon is unique to inline-six engines and no one on the team besides Oehrli had any experience with sixes, the problem seemed a complete mystery.

Oehrli took days to carefully disassemble, prepare and reassemble the first 240Z racing engine before it was placed on BRE’s Heenan & Froude engine dyno. As expected, it ran smoothly and produced good power. But this typical test mode didn’t hold the engine at full load for several long seconds at the high rpm it would face on Riverside’s or Willow Springs’s long back straights.

When BRE’s still-unpainted No. 46 rolled out for its first private test session at Willow Springs with John Morton at the wheel, there was a quiet, expectant uncertainty among the team. Comparative lap times of the competition were well known, so meeting those numbers was the initial goal.

Within the limited time that had been forced upon them to prepare a completely new and unknown chassis, members of the crew felt they’d built in every possible modification allowed under the rules. They expected the best, but with every component new and untried, no one knew what lap times would result.

Willow’s demanding circuit quickly proved just how much more work was needed to make the Z competitive. The new shocks were so stiff that the car didn’t handle well enough to get any real speed.

Without the hours of on-track development, it was obvious there was simply no way the car would be ready for the season’s first race. Fortunately, there was a Plan B.

Meet Plan B

Since Morton had started driving for BRE in the team’s second Datsun 2000 roadster late in the previous season, that chassis and engine were well dialed in. The car was still reasonably competitive and reliable.

When equipped with SU-type carbs, as it had been in ’69, Morton’s 2000 had run in D Production. But if fitted with better-breathing twin side-draft Mikunis, the car was classified in C Production. If the Z wasn’t ready, Morton could still collect points in C Production. Even though the roadster’s narrow track-to-wheelbase ratio limited its cornering power, the car’s Oehrli-developed engine still had enough power to almost match the best times of the Triumphs, Lotuses and Porsches. Morton might not have been able to win in the highly competitive C Production class, but with his skill and experience there was a good chance he could still get on the podium and collect enough points to keep him in contention for the Runoffs.