1971 Datsun 240Z in Mopar Green, London, UK

The 1971 Datsun 240Z in London That Was Never Rushed

This 1971 Datsun 240Z lives in London, is registered in the UK, and was restored over however long the work demanded. Most restorations are governed by a deadline — a show, a sale, the point at which the owner runs out of patience. This one was not: the car came apart and went back together at its own pace, and its interest lies less in any single modification than in the number of small decisions taken the long way round. What follows is a build breakdown rather than a listing. This Datsun 240Z is not for sale, and is recorded here because the standard it was held to is worth documenting.

Mopar Green Paint on a Datsun 240Z: Why a Borrowed Colour Works

The colour is the first thing anyone says about this car, and it is not original. The 240Z left the factory in something else, spent part of its life silver, and has now been returned to green — though not the green it started with. What it wears is a Mopar green, inspired by the shades Dodge was selling at the beginning of the 1970s rather than by anything on Nissan's own charts.

Chrysler launched its High Impact range in 1969 as a cheap option — around fourteen dollars — with names written to be repeated in a showroom: Sublime, Green Go, Sassy Grass. The greens sat on Dodge's books through 1970 and 1971, exactly the window in which this Datsun was built. The shade is borrowed from Detroit, but the period is not approximate.

It could easily have gone wrong. The S30 shape is Japanese in origin and European in influence, and it can look cheap in a colour that shouts. What rescues it is restraint everywhere else: chrome bumpers left alone, plain eight-spoke alloys, no stripes and no spoilers.

Under the Bonnet: L24 Engine and Twin Hitachi SU Carburettors

Mechanically the car is close to how Nissan intended. The engine is the L24, the 2.4-litre single-overhead-cam six that gave the 240Z its name and most of its reputation, fed by twin Hitachi SU-type carburettors — the factory arrangement, retained rather than replaced. Behind it is a five-speed gearbox, the exhaust is an Abarth system, and the car has air conditioning, a rarer fitment on these than people remember.

What do twin SUs give a 240Z that later cars lost?

The appeal of the early car is throttle response, and it comes from the induction. Constant-depression carburettors of this type meter fuel with a rising piston rather than a fixed jet, which is why a well set-up pair feels progressive in a way that later emissions-era fuelling on the 260Z and early 280Z did not. They are also the part most often abandoned — swapped for triple Webers in search of power, or for injection in search of an easy life. Keeping them, and keeping them working properly, is the harder path.

Why leave a rebuilt L24 at standard power?

Because in Britain that decision has consequences beyond the driving. The engine was rebuilt but produces standard output, and it was kept that way deliberately: a car over forty years old can be taxed in the UK's historic vehicle class and skip annual MOT testing, but only if it has not been substantially changed. A rebuild to original specification is explicitly not a substantial change. Chasing power is where that gets complicated, and the detail is set out further down.

A rebuild to original specification therefore keeps the car unambiguously inside the definition, where a hunt for another thirty horsepower would edge it towards the line. That decision explains most of the others here: the standard bodywork, the retained carburettors, the absence of anything that would look impressive in a specification list. The restraint is not nostalgia. It is a choice with paperwork attached.

The Rebuild: Datsun 240Z Suspension, Steering Rack and Brakes

Underneath is where the time went. The suspension was rebuilt in full rather than refreshed at the corners that complained loudest. The brakes were rebuilt with a larger servo, and the fasteners holding it together were galvanised — a detail nobody sees, and the sort of thing that separates a car built to be kept from one built to be sold.

Why rebuild a 240Z steering rack rather than replace it?

The steering rack on these cars is a known weak point, in the specific sense that fifty-year-old racks develop play and vagueness around the straight-ahead. It is common enough that specialist rebuild services exist for the S30 rack alone. The usual response is to replace the assembly outright; the better one, and the one taken here, is to rebuild it, because the original rack's ratio and feel are part of how the car steers and no substitute quite reproduces them. On a 240Z, where the appeal is directness rather than speed, that matters more than it would on almost anything else.

Why fit a larger brake servo to a 240Z?

The 240Z was light and its brakes were adequate for 1971, which is not the same as adequate for how these cars get used now. A larger servo does not add braking capacity so much as reduce the effort needed to reach it, which makes the car far less tiring over distance — a functional change on something that crosses countries rather than circulating at shows.

The mechanical photographs below were taken as the car came apart and went back together.

Bodywork, Paint and Underseal on a Restored Datsun 240Z

The bodywork is standard — no flares, no kit, no attempt to make the car look like something it is not. That restraint puts all the pressure on the panel work and the paint, because a standard S30 has nowhere to hide a wave or a mismatched shut line. The shell was taken back and repainted, and the underside sealed rather than left as found.

The paint is a Sikkens system — AkzoNobel's premium refinish line, and a brand that has been making paint since 1792, a century before there were cars to paint. That matters less as trivia than as an indication of where the work sat between economy and getting it right. A bright non-metallic green over a standard shell is an unforgiving specification.

How do you protect a 240Z that gets driven through winter?

This one needed a better answer than most, because it is not stored from November to March. The owner runs it out to a ski chalet near Chamonix — snow, grit and salted alpine roads, the precise combination that has accounted for more 240Zs than any mechanical failure ever has. Rust is what kills these cars, and it kills them from underneath.

The underside was treated with Mike Sander's corrosion protection grease, alongside a fitted lining. It is a German product that works differently from conventional underseal: a grease rather than a coating, warmed and worked into box sections and closed cavities. Rather than curing hard and eventually cracking — at which point water gets underneath and the coating protects the rust instead of the car — it stays soft and keeps creeping into seams for years. It has repeatedly won the long-term corrosion tests run by the German classic-car press, road salt included. It is the same material we found underneath the 1975 280Z widebody in Ontario, chosen there for the same reason and against the same enemy.

A standard shell also means the panel gaps are the ones Nissan set, a harder target than it sounds after fifty years of doors being opened and bonnets propped. Getting them consistent again is slow work that shows up in photographs only when it has been done badly.

The bodywork and paint stages were photographed as they happened.

A Left-Hand-Drive Datsun 240Z in London, on UK Plates

A UK-registered Datsun 240Z that is also left-hand drive sounds like a contradiction, and is in fact a deliberate arrangement. Most 240Zs built were left-hand drive — the car was engineered for export, and America took the overwhelming majority — so a left-hooker is closer to the standard article than a right-hand-drive car is. In Britain that makes it slightly awkward for overtaking and correct for everything else.

It also suits how this one is used. The car is registered and kept in London, but the owner keeps a second home in France and it spends a good deal of its life there, where left-hand drive stops being a quirk and becomes the obvious configuration. For something always intended to be driven abroad, it is a more natural fit than the alternative.

That pattern of use explains a fair amount about how the car was rebuilt. A 240Z kept as an ornament can get away with a tired rack and a hopeful underside. One that leaves London for the run down through France to Chamonix, and then gets driven on snow once it arrives, cannot. Almost every decision described above reads better as preparation for distance and weather than for display.

That photograph is the argument for the whole build: a 1971 Datsun on a snow-covered road, being used. Most cars restored to this standard never see conditions like it, which is exactly why the money went underneath.

Historic Vehicle Status and MOT Exemption: What Counts as a Substantial Change

Because this comes up constantly among UK owners, and because it shaped this car, it is worth setting out properly. In England, Scotland and Wales a vehicle does not need an MOT if it was built or first registered more than forty years ago and no substantial changes have been made to it in the last thirty. Vehicles meeting both tests are Vehicles of Historical Interest. A 1971 Datsun 240Z clears the age test comfortably; the second is the one that restorers have to think about.

The Department for Transport guidance defines a substantial change as one where the technical characteristics of the main components have changed. It names four:

• Chassis or frame — a replacement of the same pattern as the original is not a substantial change.
• Monocoque bodyshell — likewise, including sub-frames. This is the relevant one for an S30, which has no separate chassis.
• Axles and running gear — altering the type or method of suspension or steering is a substantial change.
• Engine — alternative cubic capacities of the same basic engine, and alternative original-equipment engines, are not substantial changes.

Several categories are explicitly acceptable: changes made to preserve a vehicle where original parts are no longer reasonably available; changes of a type demonstrably made while the model was in production or within ten years of the end of production; and changes to axles and running gear that improve efficiency, safety or environmental performance.

Read against that, this car sits well inside the definition. The shell is the original monocoque. The suspension and steering were rebuilt to original type rather than converted to another method — a rebuilt rack is still a rack. The engine is the original L24, rebuilt, at standard output. Nothing about it changes the technical characteristics of a main component.

Three things are worth adding, because they are where owners come unstuck. The exemption is not automatic: you declare it when taxing the vehicle, using a V112 form, and the responsibility for that declaration rests with the keeper. If you cannot confirm a vehicle has not been substantially changed, you must not claim it. And exemption from testing is not exemption from roadworthiness — the car must still be fit for the road, which is a good argument for putting it through a voluntary MOT anyway.

This is general information rather than advice, and the guidance is revised periodically — it was last updated in 2026. The Federation of British Historic Vehicle Clubs and the Historic & Classic Vehicles Alliance both publish lists of specialists who can assess a specific car.

Why This London Datsun 240Z Is Worth Recording

There is no single headline modification here, and by now it should be clear that this was the point. What sets the car apart is the accumulation: a rack rebuilt instead of replaced, fasteners galvanised instead of reused, an underside sealed instead of ignored. The 240Z has reached the stage where the good ones are being sorted out properly and the rest tidied up for sale, and from the outside the two look identical. Elsewhere in this series, a 1972 240Z in Switzerland makes the opposite case — a car so well kept it never needed any of this.

Anyone looking at a classic Datsun 240Z for sale learns quickly that condition is easy to photograph and hard to verify. The evidence is rarely in the paint. It is in the parts nobody was going to see — and in whether the person doing the work was prepared to take longer than the job required. On this car, they were.