It looks like Auto Expo 2010 in Hawkesbury, Ontario will be the only Canadian location in the upcoming season. I always try to do a couple Canadian-based episodes per season since the show has such a strong and loyal north-of-the-border following, but it just didn’t work out that way this year.

No worries tho, this little town on the Ontario/Quebec border about halfway between Ottawa and Montreal puts on a heck of a show and packed about 700 cars into just about every nook and cranny the town had. It’ll make an episode that all Canadians can be proud of!

The day was a bit chilly, but we were certainly given a warm reception. And they fixed us up with a couple of the coolest golf carts I’ve ever seen to get around in.

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It’s been a long time since I’ve done a marque-specific show (e.g. all Ford, all Chrysler); let alone a model-specific one like all Camaro or all T-bird. And although I’ve touched on Japanese cars a few times throughout the years, I’ve never done an all Japanese show. So when I was contacted by the Z-Con folks to cover the 23rd annual Datsun/Nissan Z-car convention at Nissan’s North American headquarters in Franklin, TN my first reaction was, “There’s an annual gathering of Z-cars that’s been going on for 23 years?!?”

My second thought/concern tho was whether there’d be enough diversity in the cars to make an interesting episode especially since they all share such similar lines. I decided to give it a go anyway and was pleasantly surprised that there was plenty to pick from.

The Datsun 240Z came to the US in 1970, and it was the beginning of putting Japanese performance on the map. They were slick, sleek, affordable, and lots of fun to drive. For most folks, this was the first Japanese sports car they’d ever seen. If you lived on the west coast, you may have been familiar with their predecessors the Datsun 1600 and 2000 roadsters, but not many of these made it very far east. The 240Z however was marketed coast-to-coast.

The Nissan headquarters made a great backdrop for the show and since Franklin is just outside Nashville, the club had also engaged one of the many great local bands to provide the music for the day rather than going the typical DJ route. The band was The Dirty Curties, an all-female group which struck me as appropriate since the Z-cars and the roadsters before them went by the model name, Fairlady, in Japan. The band was great and Datsun was wise to rename the cars for the US market.

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