1978 Datsun 120Y from Australia and New Zealand - Comments

Starter ring gear rotated on flywheel. Needed multiple start attempts before she roared (wimpered) into life. I just got into the habit of parking on hills facing down.

Fouled the plugs all the time (but then I was running it on AVGAS)

The Cam and cylinder bores were heavily worn when the previous owner (a work mate) bought it. He pulled it down. Decided it wasn't worth investing in repairs, and just reassembled it. The plan was to just thrash it about till it died.

The 120Y is the ugliest car I have ever owned.

I knew the motor was about stuffed, as I saw it disassembled about six months before. It had survived those six months so I figured it was worth NZD $450.

I got posted to Pilot Training squadron (Piston powered aircraft) so I ran the Datsun on AVGAS for the next 18 months. Think it got super twice. The Lead fouled the plugs, but then we had a plug tester and sandblaster so they just regular cleaning.

Couldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding. Really, really gutless car.

Sold it for NZD $550 when I emigrated. A year later my old man ran into the new owner in the pub and he was raving about how reliable it was.

Good Man!

So you had the ugliest 'rat' car too! We boys, a long time ago now, used to use one as a field car (toy). It was sludge gray. The laughs we had torturing it! It received every flavour petrol we could lay our greasy little mits on.

The tyres were down to the canvas, the seats were torn to pieces and the boot was full of broken glass and soiled clothing. It stunk like a cross between a public loo, a petrol station and an arm pit.

It was indestructible though and we even used to play a very stupid game whereby, one of us would don an old crash helmet and tear around the field whilst the others took pot shots at him with air rifles! Ping, twoink, pow.

The other daft game was for three of us to hang on to the roof whilst the pilot attempted to shake them off. I couldn't drive very well at the time as I hadn't passed my test and so took to driving under trees in an attempt to scrape them off! The pain, the pain. Poor car! Great!!!