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While blueberries abounded in Mossyrock last weekend during the 19th annual Mossyrock Blueberry Festival, gear heads from throughout the region also came to the Mossyrock Road Rebels Car Show coinciding with the festival.
A total of 130 entrants brought their prized rides and project cars to the field behind the Mossyrock Middle School for the car show, which included the return of its famous chicken drop game along with raffles and a silent auction.
Much like a cow drop — where bettors can choose numbers on a grid where a cow is walking and put money on that being the spot where the cow poops — a chicken drop is the same game on a smaller scale. A 50/50 split of the pot was up for grabs.
Organized by the Mossyrock Road Rebels Car Club, all proceeds from the car show fund scholarships for graduating Mossyrock High School seniors pursuing education in trade schools.
The Mossyrock Road Rebels Car Club was founded in 1959 by local teenagers after Washington State Patrol Trooper Bob Broshear noticed them loitering and suggested they organize a car club to be productive in the community, according to the Mossyrock Area Action League (MAAL).
Broshear ended up becoming an adviser for the club and wrote the bylaws still in use today. To learn more, visit the MAAL’s website at https://mossyrockfestivals.org/car-show/.
Some of the custom and classic cars which caught the eyes of The Chronicle included an all-original 1983 Datsun 280ZX coupe, a work-in-progress 1955 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight Holiday coupe and a custom 1989 Nissan Skyline GT-R R32 coupe.
A tuned and rescued R32
Around four years ago, Silver Creek resident Jared Swetz, already a gearhead with an affinity for sporty Japanese cars, discovered an abandoned 1989 Nissan Skyline R32 GT-R coupe.
After finding it, Swetz and his girlfriend Holley Hamilton set to work doing a complete customized rebuild.
While base-model Skylines featured smaller engines than the GT-R models, Nissan turned tuning Skyline motors for GT-Rs over to its in-house motorsports division, Nissan Motorsports International, or Nismo for short.
The cars are renowned not only for their legendary racing and drifting capabilities, but striking features and design like their iconic circular brake and tail lights.
“Me and my girlfriend took it down to bare metal, had it up on stands and took every part off all the way down to the frame,” Swetz said.
On top of repainting the frame and body, Swetz also set about modifying its engine and powertrain, fitting a lightweight flywheel to the motor and limited-slip differentials to both the front and rear.
“It has an HKS grid dancer, which lets me switch between two- and four-wheel drive. And I can push the power to front or rear bias, or 50-50 it,” said Swetz. “It makes 767 horsepower at 37 pounds of boost.”
To handle that much power, more upgrades were required — including a new clutch, clutch packs in the transmission, an upgraded drive shaft, Tomei camshafts, HKS intercooler and intercooler piping and SARD high capacity fuel injectors, among others.
Though his R32 no longer has its original motor, it still has an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) engine from a newer model, the Skyline R34.
“The motor’s actually out of an R34 GT-R N1 Nür. This is like the highest spec engine that you could get for the GT-R,” Swetz added.
Being tuned by Nismo, the R34’s engine came from the factory with many racing-spec components.
“Normally they came with a black motor. The upgrade to the black motor was a red motor, which they called the N motor, and then the N1 motor is the gold one,” Swetz said. “It’s got a racing oil pump from the factory, a racing water pump from the factory. And the N1 meant it was tested at the Nürburgring, meaning it could go around the Nürburgring flat out, full throttle, without breaking anything. So it's got endurance too.”
The Skyline was initially introduced as the Prince Motor Company’s luxury sedan and coupe in 1957. Prince Motor merged with the Nissan Motor Co. in 1966, which continued producing Skylines.
It was designed by Japanese engineer Shinichiro Sakurai, who even after the merger with Nissan remained the head engineer of the Skyline project, continuing to design successive Skyline generations until his death in 2011.
The R32 is the eighth generation of Skylines, produced from 1989 to 1993. By this generation, Sakurai’s design focus had shifted from luxury to performance — with engines going from producing between 60 and 90 horsepower in the first generation, to upwards of 500 horsepower depending on the specific model and factory tuning options by 1989.
Despite its legendary status in the automotive world, the Skyline R32 was banned from being sold in the U.S. market, along with the subsequent R33 and R34 generations, for a number of reasons.
At the time, Skylines failed to meet stringent Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS), which required pesky weight-adding extras like airbags and side impact protection.
The car’s motor, a twin-turbo 2.6 liter inline six engine, would’ve also required modifications stripping it of performance to make it pass emissions testing for the U.S. market.
Instead of modifying their creation to make it legal to be sold in America, Nissan simply withheld Sakurai’s creation from .
This made seeing Skylines in the U.S. a rare sight. Perspective buyers either needed to pay for expensive performance-ruining modifications on top of import fees in order to have one road legal in the U.S., or pay the import fees but run the risk of having the car seized by law enforcement if caught driving it without required modifications.
Thankfully, FMVSS also has what’s known as the “25-year rule,” which dictates imported vehicles 25 years or older can legally be imported even if they do not meet FMVSS safety or emissions standards.
This means not only Swetz’s Skyline, but the most famous of the Skylines thanks to the Fast and Furious film franchise — R34 GT-Rs — are now finally legal to drive. Well, the 1999 and 2000 models are, you’ll have to wait until 2026 and 2027 if you’re trying to import an OEM 2001 or 2002 R34.
Restoring an old Ninety-Eight Holiday
Being Mossyrock residents already, Mark and Cathy Thompson didn’t have to drive their 1955 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight Holiday coupe far to get to the car show. Mark purchased it after finding it in California just over a year ago.
“This is my retirement project,” Mark said.
He hopes to try to restore it to its OEM showroom condition, with plans to repaint it in its original light and dark blue two-tone paint job. He even had custom fabric woven to match the original interior the car used to have.
“My goal is to go back as close to original as possible. I do upholstery too,” said Mark.
Despite the car’s current paint job suffering from sun-rot, its original iconic Oldsmobile globe badges have survived all these decades.
These badges adorned Oldsmobiles from 1948 until 1957, and according to marketers at the time, highlighted the universal appeal of Oldsmobiles.
This marketing campaign coincided with Oldsmobile’s “Rocket” engine campaign, which sought to ride the Space Race’s popularity by comparing it with Oldsmobile’s 5.3 liter “Rocket” V8 engine — which produced 240 horsepower, quite a lot in 1955.
Mark’s Ninety-Eight Holiday still has its original engine in it with its valve covers proudly stamped “Oldsmobile Rocket.” Unfortunately, its prior owner replaced the original oil bath air filter for a modern air filter.
Oil bath air filters were two-part filters where air was forced through a mesh element to remove larger particles before being pushed into an oil reservoir — where air bubbles would pass through the oil, which acted as a sticky medium and captured fine dust and other particulates before the air was mixed with gas inside the engine.
While actually being more effective at filtering than modern air filters, oil bath air filter flaws were exposed as engines grew more powerful and had turbos installed. Air would get sucked through the filter so quickly the oil would start to get sucked along with it.
All the excess oil also added weight, which those looking to shed weight to reduce lap times did not favor.
“I do want to try to put an oil bath back on it, if I can find one,” Mark added.
First produced in 1941, Oldsmobile Ninety-Eights were the flagship model of the now-dissolved American automotive manufacturer.
Oldsmobile was originally founded as the Olds Motor Vehicle Company in Lansing, Michigan, by Ransom Olds in 1897. General Motors purchased Oldsmobile in 1908 and ran it as one of its divisions alongside Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac and GMC.
Mark’s model is part of the Ninety-Eight’s fourth generation, produced from 1954 to 1956.
Being a Holiday means it came in exclusive two-tone paint schemes along with other exclusive factory options.
This included the famous pillar-less hardtop body style, where no vertical frame existed between the side windows, giving Ninety-Eight Holidays a more streamlined look.
Oldsmobile continued production on Ninety-Eights up until 1996, when it was replaced by Oldsmobile’s new flagship model at the time, the Aurora.
As for the company itself, General Motors ran it fairly successfully throughout most of the 20th century.
However, even with Oldsmobile sales peaking in the mid 1980s and several moderately popular models released in the mid-1990s, increased competition from foreign auto manufactures caused sales to slowly decline over the next two decades.
Finally, in 2000, General Motors announced its intention to shut down Oldsmobile, citing declining sales and profitability. When production finally ended in 2004, Oldsmobile was the oldest surviving American auto manufacturer at the time.
That title now belongs to one of General Motors’ other divisions, Buick, which was founded in 1899.
An all-original Z car
While it may not be tuned to 700+ horsepower like Swetz’s Skyline, Chehalis resident Tammy Pruett's 1983 Datsun 280ZX coupe still has most of its OEM components despite being 42 years old.
The Datsun 280ZX is the second generation of Nissan’s Fairlady Z cars, a line of two-door sports coupes which started with the 240Z first sold in America in 1969.
Tammy and her 280ZX were at the car show alongside her husband Marlin Pruett, who also brought his custom 1966 Ford F-100 — which he modified and fitted with the front-end body work from a Kensworth semi-truck.
The couple goes back and forth between Chehalis and Alaska as Marlin is a career truck driver and licensed pilot. While Marlin’s F-100 has previously been featured in The Chronicle, Tammy’s 280ZX had not been.
Tammy purchased it brand-new in 1983, as it was a dream car for her. However, it wasn’t her first car.
“I say she wrecked her other car on purpose. It was a little Dodge Colt,” Marlin said.
“The jet, the little sporty one,” Tammy added. “It was cute, it would get up and go.”
While the Colt may have been sporty, it certainly wasn’t as sporty as the 280ZX, which combined the car's sleek compact design with Nissan’s 2.8-liter L28 inline-6 engine producing 143 horsepower.
“It’s only got about 120,000 miles on it still,” Tammy said. “It’s nice to drive.”
Tammy’s 280ZX was also one of the last models to wear the Datsun moniker, as Datsun’s owner, Nissan, wanted to market the cars with the Nissan name, which had more recognition.
Datsun’s roots go all the way back to 1914 in Tokyo, Japan, when Kaishinsha Motorcar Works first produced a car called the DAT.
The name was an acronym derived from the first names of the company’s three founders, Den Kenjiō, Aoyama Rokurō and Takeuchi Meitaro. In the same year, the DAT Corporation was formed, and began selling full-size cars in the Japanese market.
When the Japanese government passed a law allowing cars with engines smaller than 500 cubic centimeters (cc) to be driven without a license in 1930, the DAT Corporation developed a model with a 495 cc motor in it specifically to sell to that driver market.
This new car was called the Datson, for “son of DAT.” However, in the Japanese language, the -son suffix can carry a negative connotation as it means loss, where the -sun suffix was viewed in a more positive light, as it invoked the sun on the Japanese flag.
Thus, a change was needed, and the Datsun name was born.
Just prior to all of this in 1928, the Japanese holding company Nihon Sangyo was founded. It started purchasing auto part manufacturers, like Tobata Casting and Hitachi, but wasn’t producing full automobiles yet.
Nihon Sangyo was abbreviated for the Tokyo Stock Exchange using the first syllables of its names, Ni- and San-, creating the Nissan moniker. In 1933, Nihon Sangyo finally began producing its own cars, and the Nissan Motor Co. was born.
The following year, Nissan purchased the DAT Corporation along with the Datsun name. While all the trucks it produced sported the Nissan name, all of Nissan’s other cars were branded as Datsuns.
Datsun branding continued both before and after Nissan first entered the American market in 1958. The Datsun name was specifically used in the U.S. market, as Nissan’s name was still strongly associated with its production for the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II.
This meant even Nissan trucks, which bore the Nissan name in most other markets, were marketed at Datsuns in the U.S.
But by the 1980s, that association — like Mercedes-Benz’s and Volkswagen’s association with Nazi Germany — was fading into the history books.
Nissan initiated preparations to phase out the Datsun name in favor of having all its production cars bear the Nissan name.
By 1986, Datsun had been phased out. However, Nissan did attempt to revive the Datsun name in 2013, marketing them as cheap compact cars in Indonesia, Nepal, South Africa, India and Russia.
Despite the relaunch, Nissan would once again discontinue Datsun production in 2022.
