Look. I've been to Zama. That's the official heritage museum of Nissan in Yokohama, Japan . If the production plant is the brain of the operation, Zama is the heart - an extensive collection of every Datsun and Nissan ever built.
The building is huge, immaculate, spotless except for the dirt and patina of race cars that served in every conceivable discipline from Super GT touring affairs, silhouette racers, rally cars, Dakar and Le Mans contenders and more.
But more about those and the special production cars that live there later on. Let’s talk about Bothaville!
Wait. What? Where exactly?
Yes, Bothaville – the maize farming Free State town near the Vaal River where a local resident has turned a healthy obsession into quite the tourist attraction for petrolheads. Datsun and Nissan then; proliferators of everything from half-ton (and 1 tonner) bakkies, four door saloons with coupe siblings, sports cars to leisure vehicles with an 85 year old legacy.
For Freek De Kock it started with his love of his childhood’s Datsun 510 SSS model car, to and from there has blossomed into a 200+ assembly of cars from your youth, and your dad’s youth too. A collection spanning too many models to list here, but at a glance includes several Fairlady Zs or 240Z, plus its 260Z, 280ZX and 300ZX successors.
The SSS badge too is littered upon too many cars here to even begin counting, including 1600s and 1800s, Us and Ys, 510s, 610s and 710s. There are Cedrics here and Laurels, Stanzas and of course that most infamous of badges; Skyline. They’re all here, the BNR34 GT-R made famous by Gran Turismo and the Fast and Furious movies, the BNR33 GT-R that preceded it, and my personal favourite the R32 – the RB26DETT powered Godzilla that kick-started the four-wheel drive, turbo-charged legacy.
Predating that Freek even has a work-in-progress Ken Mary, that’s the western nickname for the Kenmeri (C110) GT-R built in 1972-1977. And then the jewel in his crown, the box-shaped Hakosuka (again, it’s just Japanese for box-shaped) Skyline GT-R or KPGC10. This was it. The inception point of the GT-R and it was flawless. Don’t ask how much it costs. In fact to distract us, Freek made us an offer we couldn’t refuse. The opportunity to drive his R34 GTR, his 2.8 SGL Skyline saloon and Nissan 370Z. Which we did till the latter ran out of fuel.
It is believed that Freek’s collection of Datsuns and Nissans is the largest outside Japan. Which is a feat on its own before we take into account the fact that we’re in the middle of ’Farmland South Africa’ where the roads are dominated by tractors, trucks and double-cabs. That makes these wonderful machines that much more special in our opinions, and what Freek has done an even more impressive feat.
For his beautiful showroom, the rustic workshops he keeps out back, to his model car showroom, spray booths, and humongous shed filled with soon-to-be-restored classics – we wholeheartedly salute him.
Now let’s talk about that Zama Heritage Museum
Nothing could prepare me for what lay on the other side of that unassuming garage door
Bonus: Here’s Calvin’s video of just some of the sites and sounds he recorded at Zama Heritage Museum in Yokohama in 2015.
I've been here before. Haven't I? It's eerily familiar yet unfathomably unlikely that I'll have previously ventured behind the steel veil of Nissan's Zama Heritage Centre, situated in the heart of Yokohama, Japan. That’s when it dawns on me; the source of my deja vu becomes clear. Through the foggy vapour in my brain, I recall in 1997 when I first saw these machines – well most of them anyway, through a CRT television screen, the day I first peered into the virtual garages of Gran Turismo on the original Sony Playstation. Yes, I actually went there.
Comparing video gaming to real life motoring is juvenile, and I’ve spent enough of my adult life perusing actual motor museums, racetracks and car collections to avoid doing so but, oh well. I’m giddy, having long lost any inhibitions at the prospect of peeking into Nissan and Nismo’s hallowed collection of road and track cars, all of them iconic, most of them rather quick.
I’m trundling down the lanes that cut through the acreage of metal, arranged according to decade, beginning deep into the 20th Century with a 1933 Datsun Phaeton. Highlights along the way include the company’s first Electric Vehicle, the Tama, produced in the late 1940s, a bank of quasi-American lead sleds and then at the sight of the first familiar badge, Bluebird, on a compact 1960 saloon it begins to get interesting.
You must understand, I’ve been eating my vegetables up until this point, and was about to dig my teeth into the meat of the Nissan catalogue. You’ll recognise the Bluebird as our P510 Datsun, more specifically their hot ‘SSS’ brandished models. Here they were merely the tip of the iceberg, where the iceberg is built entirely from wet-dream inducing Nissans and Datsuns.
Skylines. Everywhere. Saloons and coupes of every derivative and designation from the original box-shaped (Hakosuka) GT-R, the subsequent Kenmeri GT-R, then escalating through R30, R31, R32, R33, R34 and R35 generations were all bathed in fluorescent. And no shortage of Nurburgring and V-Spec editions neither, nor massively bespoilered touring car, Le Mans and silhouette racer iterations.
Fans of the Nissan Silvia were spoiled too with every version from the original coupe with its almost Italian profile and generous chrome trim, to its S11, S12, S13, S14 and S15 drift-centric successors. What about Japan’s answer to the Jaguar E-Type? I’m of course referring to the Datsun S30 240Z (and its 260Z and 280Z successors) also known as the Fairlady, a nomenclature Datsun made famous on its predecessor, a Brit roadster clone first built in 1960. That’s here too. As are several S30 rally cars still covered in the dirt from whatever rally stage they once conquered four decades ago.
Even a very rare R390 GT1 Le Mans, the R391 Prototype and an R89C were in attendance, still resplendent with post-race glow. Caged animals, the lot of them, and even though Nissan unleashes them all at the annual Nismo festival held at Fuji Speedway for the public to enjoy in the sun, I couldn’t help wishing I had my Playstation controller in hand, if only to hit the little blue X to better enjoy them for myself.
