Paul Newman & Datsun Retrospective
 

Just FYI, saw that Velocity channel (part of Discovery Network) will be showing a special retrospective/story about Paul Newman and his involvement with Nissan and other aspects of his love for CARS.

NOT about his salad dressing or popcorn, people!

You want to learn a little about what went into racing the early Z cars and its offspring AND what historical things went into making today's Zs something special in the racing circles, watch this show! Not sure of show times, check your listings for Friday, Nov. 20, 2015.

Cheers,

Mic

I'll look for it, thanks Mic. Another actor/car enthusiast was Steve McQueen from Bullit.

Yes, of course, and while on the topic of "I'll-take-famous-show-biz-people-who-are-into-racing-cars-for-a-hundred-John", let's not forget James Garner from back in the day and today, Jay Leno, Adam Carolla (who's upholding and representing for Datsuns and a big fan of Paul Newman's Datsun race cars), Patrick Dempsey, a relative fixture in endurance racing.

Nice to have the show biz guys who can actually drive doing it. :icon38:

I'll definitely look forward to that. When I was a kid, I worked a summer at the dealership which prepared the SCCA cars, Bob Sharp Datsun in Wilton, CT. I did menial stuff like sweep the shop floor, take out the trash, etc., but I was around those cars all the time and practically lived at Lime Rock Park (about an hour north) every Saturday from April thru October or so. My best friend in high school ended up with the B-Sedan 510 race car in the Summer of '76 and drove it on the street, until he was killed soon after by a lightning strike (true story). I wonder if that's one of the car's that Adam has in his collection?

Mic's thread reminds me of the last issue of Nissan Sport we were able to publish. The lead story (Fast With Class issue 24, 2012) was about Bob Sharp, his racing career and the drivers who were part of his team, including Paul Newman. Newman was notable for his approach to driving, which was the same as his acting- serious and in a winning way. While there have been, and are, many actors who have been successful in motorsports, none have the connection to Datsun/Nissan that Newman had.

It's also worth noting another actor who was part of the Bob Sharp Ltd stable was NOT nearly as successful as Newman. In the article, Sharp was quite blunt in his assessment of this young actor who went on to superstar status, when comparing Newman's career. Good call on letting the rest of us know about "Cool Hand Luke's" documentary, Mic. Thanks!

Pretty good documentary, I bought it on Itunes and I've watched it 3 or 4 times now.

getting decent reviews on Rotten Tomatoes as well (89% with top critics, 96% with audience)

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/winn...f_paul_newman/


https://my350z.com/forum/entertainme...cumentary.html

On top of this documentary - Carolla is doing a documentary on Willie T. Ribs (first african american to race in the Indy 500) and down the road Carolla has one the battle between Ferrari, Ford and the GT40...really looking forward to this one!

Who are you referring to? Can't remember another "actor" in the Sharp stable.... Only other I remember is Posey.

How could you forget about Tom "crash again" Cruise? Elliot Forbes Robinson, IIRC, also drove the IMSA cars sometimes, too.

Tom Cruise drove a BSR race car???? That must've been during those lost years I paid little attention to any sports besides those my kids were involved in! Haha....

When I was manning the Datsun Comp truck at bigger races like IMSA or SCCA Pro events, met lots of famous racers including PL Newman. Best thing was, he was "just another racer" at the track. Genuinely a gentleman's gentleman.

Funny, ran into Tony Adamowicz at the '14 Runoffs at Mazda LSIR. He remembered me from back in the day. Not by name but did recall I worked for Comp. He and EFR drove for Devendorf/electramotive. Remember the electramotive GTP that ate the 962s for breakfast? Heh heh....

IIRC, Cruise was in the GT-3 3300ZX, the one with the Planter's Nuts sponsorship.

Thanks, cable reminder set!

Yes, Tom Cruise is mentioned in the documentary but I don't remember what context. I saw this at ZCON this past July and it is tremendous. I am definitely watching again.

They've been showing it on Amazon Prime for a few weeks now. It actually does go into his salad dressing a little.

It was a good movie. I didn't realize that he was such track god.

x2

Thanks, Mic!

Thanks for the Amazon pointer - I can watch it tonight.

Hey Mic, I think you'll enjoy our last article on BSR and the man himself. PM me your addy and I'll send you a copy. Also, if Nissan Sport had survived, I'm sure we would have done a retrospective on Electromotive and NPTI itself. Who know? Maybe I would have been interviewing YOU! :icon30:

I saw Paul Newman race at Summit Point back in the late 70's. As I was walking through the paddock area there was Paul just casual walking by like any other racer. He was cool. He was also one of the most methodical drivers I had ever witness. I always sat at turn 10, a fast but sharp sweeper before the straight. Paul would dive into that turn, drop down a few gears and shift up at 9K RPM down the straight over and over again like a robot. You could close your eyes and know it was that 280ZX with Paul making a pass. In other words you count down the seconds when he was going to shift and it was always the same. We use to do it. Oh, and the sound of the engine screaming to 9K was awesome and had a very unique exhaust note.

By the way the movie didn't actually portray the real engine sounds in many scenes.

DK - do you have copies of the each edition of the magazine? Is it available anywhere in a digital form?

No, sorry- I have limited copies of some issues. Other editions are out-of-print forever. When the NSM website went down, it took all the digital copies with it.

Thanks Mic. Just finished watching it. That really was a great show.