Well my story is a fairly long winded one, but I'll do my best to spruce it up a bit. As I spent most of my schooling life in Fiji (other than a brief stint in QLD and VIC), when my family and I moved to South Oz in 2001 I ended up being shoved into year 10 at 14 years of age. By year 11, obviously I was now 15, most of my friends were already driving around (16.5 to drive on your own in SA), and I felt rather left out. So my dad and I joined a rally car club and purchased an old Toyota KE20 Corolla. I buzzed around in that for a while, and competed in the club challenge that year and took First in class, and 5th overall. So we started looking for a new car. I got hold of a Datsun 180b SSS, after seeing a remarkably successful driver blitzing the field in one (Jack Monkhouse), and drove it as is for the next championship. Once again I took the class and now had 3rd overall in my possession. We ended up pulling the car off of the road to build it into a dedicated rally car, complete with 6pt 'cage, seats, harnesses, driveline, tanks, pumps...(I think the list is too big for here, but if anyone wants some specs, I shall post them). Anyway, so it took us two years to build the car, as it was really pretty well built, to the point CAMS officials even stated it as being the best prepped vehicle. We competed in the club and state rounds in the car, gaining a 4th in class for the state season, and once again picking up first in club class.
The next year the car sat fairly dormant, coming out for special events and different show days, but other than that it gathered dust, due to a complete lack of faith in the governing body, causing me to pull out from regular competition. However it wasn't over!
In the meantime to all of this happening, I had been collecting 180 coupes, having had three for on road use, and five as spare part shells. My collection of 9 coupes was most likely the largest congregation of them at any one time for a very long time! My first road going one was painted in flat grey, it almost blended into the road! It ran my old rally motor, so it had plenty of grunt, was noisy as all hell and was a general menace to anyone in its way. The second was a green shell, missing front guards and bonnet, so I replaced them...with shiny pink ones! The reason for this, is that I had a turbocharged L20 under the hood, and in my opinion, the only thing commodore drivers hate more than being beaten by a Datsun, is being beaten by a pink Datsun! Which brings me to my final coupe. A yellow original with 57K original miles on the clock. I purchased the car without seeing it over on the eastern coast and had it trucked over. It really is a gem, however it has since been completely stripped. As it has a much gruntier motor and complete interior retrim going into it. Have been working on it on and off for 2 years now (living in Perth, while the car is in SA doesn't help matters), but its moving along well. It should be finished before I finish my degrees...
That really concludes my Datsun heritage, oh, the rally car was sold before I moved to Perth, for quite a hefty sum, and now lives in ACT, whether it still races or not, I can't be certain.
