Here is the cover picture!and in England in October 1972!
Late one afternoon in March 1997 a 'Mini-Bus' type of MPV stopped outside my home and a gentleman of Italian descent emerged from within. Thinking he might be lost I asked him where he wanted to go but surprisingly he asked me if the Nissan Skyline was my car.
Evidently, the other occupants of the said 'bus' were the editorial team of "Car Sensor" magazine (below). This is a publication almost entirely made up from advertising - both commercial and private - for CARS and is about 30mm thick with around a thousand or so pages. Apart from the adverts' they also run several 'news' stories and Japanese cars in England was the theme of the June and August editions.
Here is the cover picture!
Cover Story : DATSUN SKYLINE 240K GT (FR/WATERCOOLED, STRAIGHT LINE SIX CYLINDER, SOHC / TOTAL ENGINE DISPLACEMENT 2.4L)
A Son & his Mother by Muneshisa Mishige
We were driving past a house, when we saw a yellow coupe parked in the drive, a man, perhaps it's owner, was working on the car showing his feet sticking out from underneath. "That's a Skyline!" exclaimed my companion. In the 1970's Nissan exported quite a few types of cars. The brand name was DATSUN. The Skyline 240K-GT was one of them. It had 6 cyl SOHC, expanded to 2.4 litre. However this model, C210, rarely appeared in the UK because two door coupes were not generally exported to Britain. We turned back to the house. No doubt, it was a Skyline! There was not only this Skyline but a very rare CEDRIC 4 dr HARDTOP covered with a sheet lurking behind it. An original PULSAR (known as a CHERRY N10 in Britain) was by the pavement and a CHERRY COUPE was deteriorating in the front garden. The CEDRIC was originally brought to England by a Japanese trading company representative. After using it for a while he bought another car and the CEDRIC fell into neglect for eight years. "I bought it for £65. It was not an export model as it had an exhaust absorbing system - a CAT -, the speedometer is in KPH and everything is written in Japanese, I haven't a clue what it says!" laughed Mr. Hugh Gundersen, it's owner. However, there has been a lot of restoration on the car and it looks very nice, especially with the alloy wheels. Mr. Gundersen used to study/work with turbochargers as a car mechanic and he ran his own business fitting turbos into Celicas, Land Cruisers and other vehicles to increase their power. The business was booming and orders were streaming in, but one day, Mr. Gundersen told us, he felt he had lost his purpose in the business, so he stopped. He sold all his fast and exotic cars and ended up sharing his Mother's Cherry Coupe. I used TOYOTA cars a lot when I was in business as I used to convert them to have Turbocharges, but when I drove the Cherry I started to like DATSUN. The Cherry was tough and ran well, so I bought the 'CEDRIC'. Last summer holidays (our honeymoon 8 years ago now -HG) I took the Skyline to France. It was fully loaded on the way back and it managed the run from Djion to Calais flat out most of the way. The milage is about 80,000 mls (115,000 now) and it still cruises at well over 100mph easily (but don't tell anybody!). The head gasket blew three days after we got back home HA! HA!" laughed Mr. Gundersen (note... nearly all 6cyl Nissan motors need a head gasket change at 80,000mls -HG)
Just then Mr. Gundersen's mother came out of the house, "Look at this Cherry Coupe, I'd like to drive it but the windscreen is chipped. It can't pass the MOT. My son has promised to repair it (before I bought her a newer one! -HG) but I don't know when. When I did drive it, I used to get 100mph out of it on the by-pass" (now you know why I don't repair it! -HG) "You can go indoors now mum, mum always wants to give her opinion. I suppose every mother does!" Said Mr. Gundersen with a warm twinkle in his eye. Looking at the son and his mother we could see their 20 years of happy motoring with DATSUN.
Photo & cover photo by G.Lamola & K.Saito