Because I’m new to this Blog thing I’ve posted some pictures. In no particular order.
This heres what Mr K and Nissan unleashed on an unsuspecting American Public.
This is what a couple of american guys, Peter Brock and a driver named John Morton, unleashed on the SCCA race circuit.
Cool Ass!
The green car is my car – the Green Machine, The Montana Beast where I got the speedo to read 140 mph (that’s 225 kph to you canadians). 
In the early 1970’s japanese auto manufacturers were making cheap and cheerful little cars which sold well because of the fuel shortage issue at the time. The problem with these early japanese cars is that they were a)ugly and b)slow-ish. They certainly were not glamorous. Nissan decided that in order to be taken seriously, they had to race. So they entered some rallies and did fairly well. But the real money was in America. America didn’t know anything about rallies. There was, however, a race series that had become really popular called the Sports Car Club of America series that ran across the country from California to New York states and featured expensive exotic machines from Europe – Alfa Romeo, Porsche, Triumph and BMW. Young Americans lusted after these cars but couldn’t afford them. Most of them drove anemic funny looking things like AMC Pacers or Plymouths that they inherited from their dads or grandmas. Some of the lucky ones drove big american beasts like Chevy Novas and Mustangs. But these cars didn’t go around corners very well – to heavy and poorly engineered.
So when Nissan decided to sell more cars they decided to produce a sports car. They wanted to compete with those european brands that had rich racing pedigrees and design strengths. Being a new name they (being stoic and proud japanese) felt a little nervous about releasing their machine to the american public. At the time, racial prejudice was still strong after world war 2. In attempting to rise out of the ashes post atom bomb they quickly learned to produce cheap affordable consumer goods to hungry american consumers. They were not known at the time for quality. ‘Jap Scrap’ was a common term especially in reference to their lightly built cars.
The car they introduced to the world was called the Fairlady. Nice name. This dude named Yutaka Katayama was charged with guiding the sales of these Fairlady’s to the american market. The first thing he did was change the name. The second thing he did was change the name Nissan to Datsun. He even asked to be called simply, Mr K. So in 1970, instead of the Nissan Fairlady being introduced at the detroit auto show, out rolled the very first datsun 240 z. Mr K announced that they were going to race it and kick all those big names butts in the SCCA championships – Porsche, Alfa Romeo, BMW, Ford, Chevrolet- you name it. One factoid. The datsun’s shocks were filled with fish oil. No kidding.
The car I’m taking to San Diego is a 1974 Datsun 260 z. It was bought in Torrence Ca back in 1998 from it’s original owner.
I don’t blog. I’m not interested in coffee and I don’t like to rant about injustices. Cynical observations I keep to myself. Mostly, I don’t have time to do it anyway. Road trips are different. Aside from showing you a picture of a donkey that I might ride up a volcano with various descriptions of what it was like to eat some kind of bowell disturbing fruit, this road trip has much more to it than jumping in a station wagon and driving across the border to a ski resort. First, I have to restore a car; a vintage japanese sports car. Then, I’m driving to San Diego a mere 2 hours from where I bought the car in the first place 13 years ago from it’s original owner. While there I’m going to ride an $8,000 road bike (tour de france not motorbike) for a week with a cycling club. After that I’m visiting some friends at their mansion in Palm Springs and play polo… on horses. Cool
The Gold Omni was for the piece called “In Search Of…” which we produced for Mansfield Minerals early last year and enjoyed a trip of a lifetime in Argentina. I wanted to thank Meg and Mike and Gord for the opportunity to work on this fantastic project and the gang over at Equilibrium Resorts – CJ, Paul and Joe ( for introducing us) for trusting that my little gang could pull off some those shots that I kept convincing them and myself we would get. Also, Rohan for his patience (you want to shoot 60 happy picnickers on the shore of a remote lake in Texas watching a fireworks display? how do you expect to get that shot? There’s one gas station and a marina there) and infinite belief (and you are attempting to film a ‘lone horse galloping across a hill in the light of the moon/or sunset’. how are you going to get a horse to do that with no one riding it?). Well buddy, we didn’t get the horse shot on that trip but I did get that very shot up in Kamloops on a ranch four days ago!
So the second letter I opened was a notification that we had been voted recipients of a GOLD OMNI from the panel of judges hosting the OMNI awards. 
Two of our entries won in the recent Telly Awards competition for which there were 13,000 entries. Equilibrium Resorts one silver for best cinematography and bronze for corporate image. So when we received the notification in the mail it was a nice surprise and my little ego was a little chaffed and wondering why we hadn’t received the top honor, only to realize that silver WAS the top honor – so thank you from an ungrateful big headed producer to the Telly organizers!
Our virtual site is now virtually up and running thanks to the ever patient Annika at Kika Marketing. We have some interesting proposals out for some interesting projects out there. Keep your eye on this site and we’ll keep you posted!
