Can you imagine a factory race Datsun 1200 turning up to race at Bathurst with 9" wide rims & rubber to match.

They would win for sure as the other teams would all do themselves an injury as they fell about laughing.

The rubber that fits comfortably on a 5" or 5-1/2" rim is more than adequate & as Bert pointed out, he & others raced on the stock 4" wide rims.

If you can get a look at this car, be sure to take your camera with spare batteries as lots of flash photos of the inside & underside tend to run them flat & I'm sure that there are more than a few who would dearly love to see it.

There are alot of these old stories flying around with little or no proof of their existance. Peter Brock and his 'Lockwood Special' is a classic exaplle. Was the XU-1 with the 308 really the XU-2 or the XU-1V8? Did Moses really part the red sea? If theis car really did exist then there may not sessicarily be and documentation to prove it. My dad worked at Sims Metal in the 60's and can clearly recall the 2 door XTGT that got drived across from Ford and it sat in the stockyard all night with the keys in the ignition before getting crushed the next morning. The fact that it was a modified American falcon dressed up with Australian panels and painted every second week a different colour for different shows to give people the impression that there were heaps of them is irrelevant. It exsisted. One of Fords factories, instead of traditional rio under the slab, has about 1,000 toploaders and single rails to strengthen the concrete. I remember seeing a photo as a kid of all the gearboxs lined up in a massive pit that was to become a new assembly plant. People say that it didn't happen, but it did.

Embrace this information Dodgeman. It might be a piece of information that your many leather bound books do not contain.

Photo's would be nice of course. I am sure Chris would love to be the man to take them.

In the good ole' days a manufacturer needed 100 cars that were identical to the car being entered to actually be registered in order to be allowed to compete. After all, it was a race for regular production cars.
I think that for Aussie manufactured cars the number was 250 cars, .. hopefully somebody can clarify.

One of the first posts refers to 'only' 100 being made with narrowed chassis rails in order to fit wider rims.

The question I ask myself is who would be spending the money to have this major structural modification done to 100 Datsun 1200 cars, & then never fit the wheels that such a modification would allow.

I have no doubt that someone, somewhere has probably done it, but 100 of them & never use them for their intended purpose? [Production racing at Bathurst]
The chances are pretty slim.

Muahahahaha... Muahahahaha... Muahahahaha... The urban ledgend of the wide body 1200. If you go out in the woods today, your sure of a big suprise.

Unless of course some Ol' mate has mistaken an A10 stanza coupe as a 1200 and started the myth. Chinese whispers and pub stories. The 80's and 90's were full of pub mechanics. I'm sure times haven't changed.

Chris, the story behind the wide body, or should i say 'wide body' is that Nissan made cheater bodies for the Japanese domestic racing series, which were 4 inches wider. The legendary class winning 1200 coupe is one of these cars, brought in for Bathurst. The twin carbies & the 5 speed were what drew the attention of everybody, nobody thought that they weren't kosher on the body shell. The car in question is the John Boston owned coupe,
which was the spare car. I can remember seeing the demonstration of a standard coupe rear seat not fitting & them (John & his brother Micheal) having to use a 120y seat because they were running Club Car (turned into Improved Production) not Sports Sedan. At that time Club Car needed full interiors, including centre consoles. I can remember another friend having a heated argument that his Corolla coupe was the poverty pack one & it didn't come with a centre console,which was not true but it convinced that scrutineer. I was running a 1200 sedan so I was OK. I can also remember an event where the scrutineer was insistent all 1200 coupes had a parcel shelf & we all had to get them in or we wouldn't be allowed to race. That one took a combined effort of 4 owners to convince him he was wrong.

I dont wish to start an argument about wide body 1200 coupes,but all this talk about them seems to me to be all second hand information and hear say.I worked for John Roxbough motors (Datsun racing team Australia)for 11 years 1968-79 and i spent 90% of my time working on all the race cars john had in those years.

Firstly the coupe we had was NOT i repeat NOT a wide body coupe.The coupe was built in japan as a race car and shipped here in a container,with all the so call cheat part already on it.
All these parts were amoligated parts and were legal to run,but as Roxbough was the only factory team dealer no one else could get hold of any of the trick bits.

Secondly ther was never a SISTER car unles some one here built a mockup version.
We did build a 120y with all the goodies but it was not a sucess(to heavy.
If any body has any more first hand knowledge, i would say that i must have worked with them at Roxbourghs then,i do remember all the guys from that time.Unfortunatly a lot have pass on.

This picture is the coupe in question

And guess who was the Signwriter for the dealership at that time?
Although it was pre Vinyl sign days,we used to pre cut(fablon)window stickers using a "normal" car as a template for width and depth....guess i'd have been 4" short if it was any fatter.

I have that very same picture sitting on my mantle over the fireplace at home....

It sounds like the Myth is BUSTED!

So it's reasonable to say then that neither Nissan Australia nor anybody else produced 100 Datsun 1200 cars with either modified/widened body shells or narrowed chassis rails for the purpose of racing at Bathurst, remembering that several of our forum members were directly involved in the dealership & the race team that was, in effect, the Datsun Australia factory team during the years that the 1200 was campaigned.

It is possible that one or more Datsun 1200 cars with either a wide body or a narrowed chassis existed & was/were raced in some category or other, but were never supported by Nissan Australia in any form.

Would that be a fair summation?

The 1200 coupe that was in fact campaigned, & sourced as a factory prepped car from Japan, was it badged as a Sunny or as a Datsun?

Come to think of it, if somebody slipped another 4" of width into my 1200 coupe, I'm sure that SOMEBODY would notice it. I know i would. 4" is a lot in a little car like a 1200