Despite coming out half a century ago, the Datsun 240Z sparked enough interest in the automotive industry to remain popular to this day. For now, let’s watch Jay Leno’s 20-minute review of a particularly interesting roofless example.
James Smith obtained the car for a token fee of $1,000 back in 2001. The previous owner had already chopped off the roof and put a 5.7-liter Chevy V8 under the hood, but handling and overall dynamics were much to be desired, so Smith set off to fix these issues.
He polished the rims of the roof to get rid of the sharp metal snags and had the entire body painted a fashionable subdued olive green. He added a spoiler at the rear and stripped the front bumper of some of its décor. Panasport wheels filled out the arches, and new springs were installed for better handling. To compensate for the rigidity losses due to the missing roof, he added a brace at the front and a roll bar in the back. The result was a car that finally felt like a cabriolet on the road.
Smith also bored out the engine to 5.8 liters and renamed it to ‘Datsun 580Z’ (no such model existed on the Datsun lineup). After all was said and done, the wheels received around 300 horsepower – twice the original amount of thrust.
Watch the full video if you want to learn more about such conversions.