Classic car opinion requested:to louver or not to louver?

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Should I scoop over the back windows?

  • Yes! It will look like a little Gt40 and chicks will dig it!

    Votes: 20 76.9%
  • No Marty, now refuel the flux capacitor so we can get out of here

    Votes: 6 23.1%

  • Total voters
    26
Extra "Gearhead Points" for whoever can i.d. that little white car in the background, and who made the engine. For the tiebreaker, what movie was it seen in?

Scarab with a caddy motor .

I have a '79 Datsun 280 ZX with black fiberglas louvers on the back " window " . Looks much better " with " .
 
First, I think the scoops are better too.
Second, no one has gotten the make/model of that white car, but it's fun to see the creative guesses. Now I could drop some clues as to who made it or what movie it was in but people would just google it and what's the fun in that? It's shorter in height than a Bradley GT and weighs ~one & a 1/4 tons, the bodywork is aluminum, the motor is derived from a regular production engine, but someone (read, "a particular company which is very well-known") converted it to DOHC and its output was > 1 b.h.p./cu.in. The motor came in a couple different sizes, but essentially with that exception, it was the same engine. Equipped w/4 wheel disc brakes, a close-ratio 5 speed manual transmission only, with the exception of the movie version, they were all coupes. Comparisons to the Jaguar
XK-E are appropriate, as the design parameters had that as a target vehicle, down to size, running gear, interior, and even the dashboard (also wood, like the XK-E). One time I stopped into my friend's Ft. Lauderdale foreign car repair shop, and he had two of them in for service, which is kinda like opening the other garage door after finding a Veryon in the first bay, and finding a second Veryon! But, this car is more-exclusive than a Veryon, believe-it-or-not! Counting all the versions of the Veryon, total production of the Bugatti ran past the multi-year total for the 'white car' awhile ago. This diminutive sportscar was built for multiple markets (about as big a hint as I can give). You are gonna be surprised when you find out who was responsible for its manufacturing/construction!
 
Here is a body-off chassis shot which should give you the info needed to figure out what it is:

My parents owned a version of this engine in a car they bought new, it was a top-of-the-line USA offering when they purchased it. I liked driving it because it was an OHC inline 6 w/a 4-speed, bucket front seats and very comfortable. The dealership where they bought it had one just like the 'white car' in the showroom and it drew people in like free $$! Just a great car especially for its time.
 

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why you need to spoil a car? what + will install bucket? how easy it is to do back? why the manufacturer decided to do so? they are fools? factory solution is cheaper, why?
1) bucket-ass harder. it has to be balance. to do something on your nose.
2) it will not original. its historical value becomes smaller.
3) consider the most beautiful girl. always have a couple of things that need a little change. but. it's another girl. and often worse than the first option.
 
I'll try again---Mgb and the motor.........Uhhhhh........ don't know!!:confused2:

Nah, not an MGB, most of those were 4 cyl's, though for a couple of years they did make the Buick 215 cu in. aluminum V8 version, which was withdrawn because it rivaled the XK-E in performance, upsetting the carefully-orchestrated pricing-for-performance hierarchy at British Leyland.

OK, how-about the apparent vintage of the car? Let's start there. BTW, the pic in my prior post is actually a model, but it looks pretty-good, eh? It does show the chassis construction to great advantage, what other car used a similar configuration at the same time? The XK-E and that car were style/design benchmarks for the company.

More rare than a Bugatti Veryon...
what can it possibly be?

Anyone recall where you might have seen the phrase, "Look, it's a LaDawri!" about-which I also posted?
 
The OHC six reference makes me think of John Delorens Pontiac engine that was developed to run with the small V-8 crowd of the day, 1966 comes to mind for 1st year production............................You could get it in 4 barrel flavor too!
 
The engine began as a SOHC inline 6 but was modified by "a well-known company" to be a DOHC. Pontiac and Corvette are wrong. One of my friends in Battle Creek had the SOHC 6 LeMans and he was a good driver, we used to go to "The Note" which was a nightclub on Gun Lake MI where we used to see Alice Cooper, Bob Seeger, and Ted Nugent, among others. He spent most of the time with the car in the high rpm's and since it was a manual transmission, that 250 cu in. 6 really screamed. Yes, the engine was avail. w/a Rochester Quadrajet carb, a much-maligned intake device which I had on a '77 Trans Am & it gave me years of trouble-free service, it was rebuilt by me along the way but was always able to be placed back in service.

The John Delorean reference to the SOHC 6 is correct. I believe it was the first domestic mass-produced engine with SOHC, the first domestic mass-produced engine using a timing belt instead of a chain. A fine engine design, capable of rpm's beyond the capacities of the accessories bolted-onto the engine, which subsequently limited its useful rpm range. One of my h.s. assistant football coaches in SW MI had the Gen 1 Firebird w/the "H.O." option, the SOHC 6 w/the Rochester Quadrajet.

So, no, not a GM design, the little "white car!"
 
I swear Fireguy..............Your mind is like a steel trap, you have somehow managed to retain every bit of info that has passed between your ears over your lifetime!............Heck, I have to think as to what I did two days ago...........Would be fun to sit down with ya sometime...................Tom.
 
We finally have... "a winnah, f-f-folks!"

In 1969, I was living in SW MI and one of the jobs my dad had was doing an inventory system for the local Toyota dealership. They had a white Toyota 2000GT in the showroom. Now, this was such a small dealership, they only had room for one car in the showroom, everything else was out on the lot. That 2000GT drew more people into the showroom than any car I have ever seen. There were mechanics from domestic dealerships who would come in on their lunch hours & ask to see 'under the hood.' Then they would get down on all-fours & look under the back & front. Considering you could buy an XK-E for less $$, this thing did its job, to inform people this Japanese co. was capable of building something besides Land Cruisers, Corollas, and Coronas. We had bought a new '67 Corona 4 dr. and my parents were so happy w/it they bought a '69 Crown, which was comparable to today's Lexus. It had a SOHC inline 6 & a manual 4-speed. The throws were a bit long, not any worse than a Muncie M23, and it handled well given the large 'standard' body size domestic cars of the day. That motor is what became a DOHC for the 2000GT.

Now, who built the car, who modded the SOHC 6 motor? Toyota, right? Nope!



Yamaha designed the conversion to DOHC from a production SOHC, and they also did the manufacturing of what would today be referred to as a boutique car. Kar Kraft, Holman & Moody, Cars & Concepts, American Sunroof Corp. (ASC), Carroll Shelby, and others all built limited-production cars for Detroit. They started w/a stock body & running gear which was then heavily modded to meet the company's desires. Yamaha built the entire car using some Toyota parts, quite a bit different!

Yamaha did it for Toyota, including much of the development work. One story goes that this was a design that had been shopped-around by the designer who was well-known in the industry, and who had other successful designs to his credit. Datsun considered building it, but backed-out at the last minute. Evidently, they had cold feet, because they later went to the same designer and had him do another car for them that the did take to market a few years later, they called it the 240Z.

The apparent truth is close to that but it was an inside design job, as this article reveals. http://commanderbond.net/11802/the-cbn-james-bond-toyota-2000gt-story.html

So, this rare Toyota, built to showcase the design and manufacturing prowess of its parent company, more-rare than the Bugatti Veryon, was actually developed and manufactured for them by Yamaha.

I'll never forget entering my friend's Ft. Lauderdale shop and seeing two of them waiting for mechanical work. They were surrounded by his other customers' cars, a Lamborghini w/< 4K mi. on it, the owner burned-out the clutch and was asking for a warranty repair from the dealership, and my friend was asked by the dealer and the distributor to look for signs of abuse. That V-12 was sitting on a cradle next to the car. Then there was the Porsche Turbo, the Aston Martin Lagonda (one of the meanest 4-dr. cars ever put onto the road) and the 2000GT pair, all waiting their turns. That day I got to ride in the Porsche and the Aston Martin.

For the era, the Toyota 2000GT was the epitome of the Japanese auto industry, and are rarely seen today. You can always see James Bond's Japanese Secret Service contact drive one of two convertibles ever built, in You Only Live Twice. Did you know James Bond was married? See the movie.
Interestingly, the bad guys chasing James riding in the 2000GT were driving the car my parents bought, and the bad guys' car's engine (Toyota Crown) was the starting point for the 2000GT. One of the great James Bond stunts occurs when the bad guys meet a Chinook helicopter.

http://www.classicandperformancecar.com/features/octane_features/231369/you_only_live_twice.html
 
Did you know James Bond was married? See the movie.

You know this lends credence to one "fan theory" about Bond that I read.
James Bond is not a single person but a code name. If you look at the body of Bond movies and novels through that, all the different Bonds and reboots make sense.
 
i would go for with the scoops, look bad ass and i am sure you want to go too but you thing the visibility right. you seat on the front seat !!!!! go with the scoops if any one have a problem with that with you car and tells you about visibility let him take a taxi.
 
and once again i can thank this website for an interesting and educational thread. Firemedic- ive trolled a few of your threads and have to agree with the steel trap comment... lol. good job

toyota and yamaha... interesting,

peace,
evan...
 
Yamaha has done a lot of engine work for other manufacturers. They did the original Ford Taurus SHO motor also.
 
The Ford SHO DOHC V-6 was one where the redline could have been higher but Ford wasn't going to spend the $ to make the other engine accessories live in an extended rev zone few people would likely use.
 
You know this lends credence to one "fan theory" about Bond that I read.
James Bond is not a single person but a code name. If you look at the body of Bond movies and novels through that, all the different Bonds and reboots make sense.

I began reading the James Bond novels as a teenager when one of my friends passed-on a copy he had finished reading, and from then-on, every one that came out, I bought it hardbound and read it immediately. I recall going on a date to see Goldfinger in the theater, it was one of the first dates I had 'after the sun went down,' in 1964. My personal favorite is "From Russia, with Love," and that's probably the first time in the movies (SpecOps13 & KJShover alert!) that the AR-7 was used. Sean Connery uses one to shoot from cover behind a boulder in Turkey while SMERSH operatives in a rotary aircraft are using grenades to try and kill him in the countryside. Calmly assembling the packaged long gun, he snipes the passenger who has pulled the pin on yet another handheld & deployed ordinance, causing him to drop the grenade in the helo.

And everyone of a certain age probably recalls seeing Ursula Andress energing from the Caribbean in a white bikini barely-containing her bountiful pulchritude with a diving knife strapped to her waist. (Dr. No) I think that and Raquel Welch's costume (what there was of it) in 'One Million Years B.C.' were two of the most famous pictures from the movies of that time.


http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi3725330201/

Be sure to watch the movie trailer from the link.
 
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