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Bisa Nitip Bisa Dititp: Car of the Week: 1973 Datsun 240Z
Thursday, December 29, 2022
Car of the Week: 1973 Datsun 240Z
A 240Z keeper, the Wartburg, murder mystery Pontiac and MoPar truck muscle in this week's newsletter.
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When the Datsun was purchased new, Michael Bennett was shown no love at the dealership. Luckily, the 240Z has provided ample amounts of joy to make up for it over the years.
Michael Bennett didn't get off to the greatest start with his new Datsun 240Z back in 1973.
There certainly wasn't anything wrong with the car. It was awesome then — and it's pretty awesome now. It was dealing with the hardball car dealership and a prickly salesman that turned out to be the biggest challenge.
"When we went to order it and put our down payment on the car, they said it would be like a month or so before it would come in, and they called us a week later and they said 'Be here by 9 o'clock tomorrow morning with the rest of the payment or it goes to the next person on the list,'" recalls Bennett, a resident of Oshkosh, Wis.
The dealer had also demanded that Bennett pay for add-ons that inflated the price of the new Z-car: rust-proofing for $99, a front spoiler for $60, a front bumper overrider for $30 and Shelby Viper mag wheels for $220. The total bill was a healthy $5,439.50.
A look at a car with a funny name that made its way to America from East Germany
Production of Wartburg automobiles began in 1899 in Eisenach, Germany, by a company known as Fahrzeugfabrik Eisenach. The Wartburg brand name came from a local attraction, Wartburg Castle, an impressive medieval citadel standing high on a hill overlooking the town. The company's first car was a one-cylinder, two-passenger machine with a top speed of just 15 mph.
Investigators still seek whereabouts of 1929 Pontiac involved in a 1930 murder.
An interesting item turned up in a 2022 edition of the Pontiac Oakland Club International's Early Times Chapter newsletter, ETCetra. In it, chapter founder Arnold Landvoight writes of getting a phone call from the Justice Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) regarding a 1929 Pontiac.
The caller was a retired ATF agent who was working with a retired FBI agent to dig up facts about a murder that occurred in 1930. It seems that the victim — Ray Sutton — was a Bureau of Prohibition agent who was killed in New Mexico. His case was of special interest to the two investigators, because Sutton's body was never found. That makes him the only federal agent ever killed on duty whose remains haven't been recovered.
Mother MoPar may not have been first to the performance party, but she became the life of it. Wild colors, outrageous stripe packages and hairy engines meant MoPar had arrived. Beating MoPar to the go-fast fun were Ford with its flathead V-8 of 1932 and General Motors with its overhead-valve V-8 in Oldsmobile and Cadillacs in 1949. When the hemi-head V-8 came out in 1951, Chrysler Corp. swung the door open and didn't stop partying. The quick Chrysler C-300 luxury sports car arrived in 1955, wildly low and finned models appeared for 1957, dual-cross-ram intakes swirled on the market in 1960 and shrunken Dodges and Plymouths for 1962 took a "Max Wedge" version of the big Chrysler/Imperial 413-cid V-8 and went racing.
By this time, Ma MoPar was dancing on tables and asking, "Why not build a performance truck?"
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