110 more.

We’re Rally 240 – it’s right there in the team name.

The 240z has been our steed for almost 15 years now and what started out as a cheap and convenient car for doing rally has turned into a real passion project that has grown and evolved to become a big part of our lives and in part helps define us and what we do in the sport.

Plenty of people know and recognise our car before they would know who we are, it’s become part of our branding and promotion and we like it so much that we even built another one just for quiet Sunday drives and car meets.

It’s also helped define our association with classic cars and classic rally in particular, there is a real divide in the rally community between Classic and Modern classes with often significantly different technical and sporting regulations separating the groups.  Classic rallyists are like a gang or a tribe, eschewing modern conveniences like safety and performance and celebrating history and tradition by changing their own gears and having no air conditioning.

And they do this in cars that are getting rarer, more valuable and increasingly more difficult to repair and maintain.

For a while now we’ve looked at the modern (or Early Modern) rally competitors and assumed that one day we’d probably move into that class.  Over the last couple of years we’ve done a fair bit of modernising the old Datsun with fancy fuel injection and electronics (did someone day cruise control?) that have made it easier to live with and a bit more reliable and consistent. Now it starts and runs every time (even in the snow at Mt Buller) and electric power steering makes it a bit kinder on the driver.

But it’s still a 50 something year old car, it’s small and a bit cramped and not the easiest thing to get in and out of. But we love it.

But how long can we keep running it?  Well the rule makers might just have something to say about that and it just might bring the competition life of the 240z to a close a bit earlier than we had been expecting.  All in the name of safety.

Safety is an ever moving target, not a list to be ticked off but rather a process to review and refine over time.  Race and rally cars have had some odd exceptions to this rule in the form of “grandfathering” technical regulations.  While some safety items are non-negotiable (like helmets and belts) and must always be up to the current standards there are other areas like seats and roll cages where the same requirement to keep updated doesn’t apply.

Our 240z was built as a rally car in 2008, log booked and complied to the rule set that applied at the time.  In 2008 for a national spec tarmac rally car the roll cage only needed a bare minimum of cross bracing with just a single diagonal brace in the main structure, either in the main hoop or in the rear stays.

Compare that to now where the same car built today needs double diagonals in the main hoop and the rear stays, plus a host of other changes like double door bars and roof crosses plus “A” bars in the door frame and more gussets than a pants factory. But our old design is still eligible to run in the same events with the same risks as those newer cars with a much higher safety threshold.  Taken to the extreme this grandfathering has seen classic cars with alloy roll hoops competing in circuit events in which they were otherwise regulated away decades ago. Let’s not even talk about veteran cars running without rollover protection at all let alone a decent seat belt.

This pragmatic approach has allowed older cars to keep competing while making newer builds safer and keeping some “historical significance” to the designs and technologies of the time period but perhaps it’s time to take off the rose tinted glasses and start making some decisions just on the safety grounds.

How can you rationalise that one car needs “x-level” safety systems to be safe while another car only needs “y-level” in the same event with an otherwise identical set of technical regulations?

Of course on a personal level I’ll be directly affected if a rule change in the name of safety makes my otherwise perfectly fine race car an overnight dinosaur but you just can’t leave some decisions up to the competitors or there will never be meaningful change.

So in anticipation of such changes we’ve taken the plunge and will be moving over to a slightly more modern car for the upcoming season – introducing Rally 350 – our new 2005 Nissan 350z.

The 350z keeps us in the Nissan Z family and is something a little more interesting perhaps than the usual econobox rally cars and turbo AWD monsters.  At 2005 vintage it places us in the middle of the Early Modern class (sandwiched between classic and modern) and while it affords a few less freedoms for modifications over the Classic class it does bring modern conveniences like ABS brakes and stability control as well as the improved passive safety a more modern car delivers.

From a competition side it’s not likely to match the BMWs and Porsches (let alone the Corvettes) and in realty might not be any faster than our current well developed 240z but I’m prepared to sacrifice some performance for air conditioning and power windows….

This particular car has apparently already got some rally  heritage with an entry in the 2008 Targa Tasmania but the original log books are long gone and a couple of changes in ownership in the intervening years means the actual details are lost to me.  For now though the car needs to be brought up to current standards so the 350 is off to MDR Motorsport in SA for a new national spec cage and the fitment of the all important winged seats.

We’ve already had a shakedown run on the International Circuit at The Bend to make sure the AP Racing brakes are up to standard and to have a quick play with the shocks and tyre pressures and I’m pretty happy with how the car stops and turns and just how well a reasonably standard road car stands up to a 38deg summer track day out of the box.

And then we’ll be ready to hit the stages again with a target of making Great Tarmac Rally again in September and then Adelaide Rally at the end of the year.

It’s a new adventure for us, a new car and new challenges to face (it doesn’t fit on our trailer for starters) and a whole new set of performance mods to contemplate in the coming years to try an keep up with those M3s.

Or we could just flick the AC on and enjoy the stages in a little more comfort.