Whilst searching for something else entirely, I came upon this old thread.
Some of what I read surprised and dismayed me. I hope that nobody minds me reviving it in order to make a few observations and corrections. I've taken the liberty of doing a bit of cutting and pasting in order to try and make it easier to read through. Apologies to the original posters for the chopping......
Originally posted by soubriquet
Last night I watched a docu-drama about Prince (the car manufacturer, not the artiste-who-used-to-be-known-as..).......
Anyway, apropos nothing very much other than a discreet trawl, does anyone have any background or comment on this series and the cars?
As has been mentioned, this was an episode of NHK's 'Project X Challengers' series - which ( in my opinion anyway ) was a fairly gallant attempt to reveal some of the personal stories behind Japanese products, inventions, discoveries and achievements of the last century or so. The episode called 'The Last Prince', which covers the story surrounding the Prince R380 sports racing car, was eventually released on DVD by NHK in 2005: ISBN4-7786-0151-3.
Originally posted by T54 .......a Repco-Brabham BT8, chassis # SC-64-08, re-bodied as a coupe. The car was simply fitted with the inline-6 from the Prince Skyline, fitted with hotter cams and 3 double barrel Kei-hin carbs......
.......The cars kept the 380 moniker, and later new versions were built as 382, then 390.....
.......Nissan purchased the ailing manufacturer by 1968.......
Actually, the Prince 'GR8' twin-cam 24 valve six of the Prince R380 was nothing like the 'G7' engine that was fitted the the Skyline of the same period. There were no interchangeable parts at all, and they did not use Keihin carburettors either. First GR8s used Weber DCOEs, and then went to Lucas sliding throttle injection.
The Prince - and subsequently Nissan - 'San-Per' / 'San-pachi' ( 'Three Eighty series' if you like ) sports racers had a quite complicated numbering system, with many interim and 'test' configurations that were never actually raced. These can be quite confusing, but "390" was never one of them ( that's a much later model from a different generation ) and the end of the line for the original series was the R383, which never raced.
Prince Motor Co. and Nissan Motor Co. entered into what amounted to a forced merger - with the Japanese government doing all the pushing, as it was seen to be in the interests of both parties - in August 1966. No money changed hands, but PMC was effectively swallowed up by the massively larger Nissan. Despite this, some of the Prince people fiercely protected their status as ex-Prince staff and continued to behave as though the merger had never happened. There was even some inter-factional rivalry between the two competition departments that hobbled some cars - but that's another story.....
Originally posted by soubriquet Those Keihins looked mighty like old Webers to me.
They were indeed Weber DCOEs. However, the car in the studio during the 'Project X' episode was a recently made
replica, built by Shinichiro Sakurai's company 'S&S Engineering'. Dr Sakurai - a key player in the Prince sports racer and Skyline stories - was the gentleman you saw getting into the car and starting it up.
Comparing this replica to the original car(s) for the purposes of research is something of a cul-de-sac., I'm afraid!
Originally posted by soubriquet The story is that Prince were an engineering-led company spun off an aviation conglomerate post-war. Their merger with Nissan (1966) brought the design and production talent neccessary to move from production of Austin based designs to cars like the 240Z.
Originally posted by Ray Bell I think it's fair to say that the Prince engine was the father of the Nissan/Datsun line that started with the 1600.
Much of what has been written about this subject in the English language has been greatly biased against Nissan, which is quite unfair. Nissan was already striding ahead boldly before PMC was brought into the family, and any suggestion that PMC had been a heart transplant for Nissan misses quite a lot of the story. In fact, the export success of cars such as the 510 Bluebird and S30-series 240Z had just about
nothing to do with PMC.
There has been much nonsense written over the years about the origins of Nissan's 'L-series' four and six cylinder SOHC engines, and much of it seems to have originated from Nissan USA's advertising blurbs. Contrary to the myth, the L16 first seen in the north American market Datsun 510 models was
not the first of a 'new' breed of engine with Prince DNA, and the L24 of the 240Z was most certainly
not "an L16 with two extra cylinders added on" either! The truth is the the very
first Nissan 'L-series' SOHC engine ( part of Nissan's 'L-series Module' of varying sizes / types of L4 & L6 SOHC engines ) was first specified in July 1964 as a response to arch-rivals Toyota's new six cylinder engine in their 'Crown' model, and within a year the first Nissan 'L20' SOHC six would be fitted to the H130-series Nissan Cedric 'Special 6' model - this a full year
before the PMC / Nissan merger.
Originally posted by T54 Today, the surviving original car at the Ginza belongs to...Toyota.
That's not strictly true. The Prince R380 ( based on Brabham BT8 #SC-64-08 ) that is sometimes seen in Nissan's 'Galleria' showrooms at Ginza, and at the Toyota Museum, is actually part of Nissan's 'Heritage Collection' ( mainly housed at their old Zama facility, and not open to the general public ) and is technically only
on loan to Toyota.
Now I need a cup of tea...........
. The Porsche had a very "Porsche" moment while leading in the wet, being reversed into the barriers at high speed [insert 1 finger smilie]. The Prince Skyline was victorious, and honour, well, honoured.
