c'mon wheels, take this boy away

Eventually, they did. Who wants to sit a uni exam on a warm, early summer Saturday morning? Certainly not me. Here's the Datsun 1600 sports story.









When my family moved to Canberra in the mid 1960s, I fell in with a group of blokes at school, one of whom corrupted me for life by turning me on to cars. He had an enormous collection of Wheels and Modern Motor and we discovered Cars and Car Conversions and Car, featuring the wonderful, late LJK Setright.

As we got closer to turning 17 we started to buy our first cars. His first was one of these rare little Berkeley B105s, one of only five in Australia. He followed that with a series of Triumph sports cars. I began with the Austin A30, then the Morris Isis that I bought from the old man, then an early (long stroke) Mini Cooper, then an Austin Freeway wagon. By this stage I reckoned I was ready for a sports car. I had an open mind on what, except for an MGB because I reckoned there were too many of them about. So by a laborious process of trundling out to the old Sports Car Centre in Fyshwick, ACT, I eventually got the Datto, an early 1966 model, with a 3 main bearing crankshaft but not bearing the Fairlady name badge. It had a leaking rear main bearing so the first step was to pull the donk out to replace this, so that oil no longer got onto the clutch and the thing might actually go forward in the approved fashion.

By chance - is it ever? - the very next weekend one of these little buggers came up for sale. One of only 15 in Australia, quick and rare and this one was not only in good nick, but the owner only wanted the same as I'd just paid for the Datto. Bummer!

Anyway we got the Datto going, it overheated regularly for a while and then came good. By my lights, if you owned a sports car you should leave the hood down all the time and so I did, even through the Canberra winter. The car had a good heater (gets cold in Japan!) and I wore sheepskin mittens and a beanie. It was bracing but exhilarating, given a broad interpretation of that word. The only other downside to top-down motoring was the half hour spent getting knots out of my fashionably shoulder-length 1970s style hair after any long road trip. Ouch!

The 1600 proved a reliable enough little toy. Around that time, European tyres were becoming popular and I put a set of Metzlers on it. There may well have been worse tyres in the wet, but if so I don't know what - the damn thing was close to uncontrollable, although the enthusiastic driving style may have been a factor. That said, the only bingle was inflicted by a girl I was keen on, when I let her drive it after the office Christmas party. Didn't get me anywhere, either.

Some time around then, I must have also sat down to a uni computing exam one Saturday morning. I couldn't recognise anything on the paper that rang any bells and it seemed a bit pointless to waste three hours of such a beautiful day. Those the precise sorts of days when sports cars are in their element...

Eventually I got a bit bored with the Datto - I quickly got bored with all cars in those days - and so one Saturday when I was taking a young lady out and thought I needed something more comfortable, I traded the Datto on the first of a long line of Triumph sedans, a Mk1 Triumph 2000.

But that's another series of stories.