You can't help but admit... the 280 has in the past recieved a bit of flack, and in the present is now slightly overlooked in favor of the 240 and 260, mostly due to sporting those ugly bumpers... Despite of course, having brought performance back to 240-like levels after the slight embarassment that was the 260, with an increasse in refinement, smoothness and torque from those 2.8, EFI'd liters...

Still, I've always remembered the 280 as the beater Z... Always suffering the shame of being shorn of bumpers (or having them battered to bits), engine swapped, or living most of their days as simple beaters... At worst, wrapped around trees due to a high performance/cost of entry ratio, or left as worthless, rotting into a brown pile in someone's yard. 

Amazingly, today's enthusiasts might be surprised to learn that Z sales skyrocketed in the 280 era, this despite uber-inflation and bumper issues.

 

And yet, how many 280s are seen at today's car shows, compared to say, 240s? (Or rather, cars identifiably 280 in nature...)

The Z cognicenti typically whine a bit when they see the big bumpered 280, with lament for days of unleaded gas, net/gross weight, net//gross power measurements making things seem worse than they actually were... Not that things weren't, of course pretty bad, especially for the competition, especially for US carmakers... Who, let's face it, are the Z's main fanbase- those who wouldn't own a foreign car, except that it's a Z, so it's ok...

Perhaps those who were there just regard it as too much of an era car, and not for a very happily recalled era. Ignoring the fact that the 280 truly continued the tradition of Z car innovation and offering of budget high-tech... Where the 240 was the first place to get IRS, OHC, discs, and spaceship styling in an attractive, affordable package, the 280 added EFI to that equation...

   

Let's put it this way: The year is 1975. Your liesure suit doesn't go with your Schwinn, and you suspect this to be the reason why your social worker keeps refusing date offers.

So what are YOU going to get? Choices aren't your generations strong suit. You probably just voted for Nixon and as a result, didn't even get a chance to pick the current president (Ford), and in a few years you'll retaliate and vote Carter. Which is just a whole other story.

Anyway.

...You COULD buy the worst Corvette ever. But wait... in this era a Corvette is still a Corvette (not like today's situation at all), with all the flimsy build and dynamics the term was originally defined as, but you're an American generally ok with this. Except for the fact that now the engine acts like it has less than half the cylinders it displayed a few years earlier... Thinking F body? Like that, but worse. Plus, no silly Z28 graphics to comfort the blow this year.

You therefore deduce that going back to GM is just too depressing really, like watching your granddad try to kickbox the mailman.

Mustang II? The tiny wheels make it look more like something you'd wear to a roller disco/derby... and that's in fact the least of its problems. A Celica is actually a better Mustang, but you're still American, and it's still 1975 (along with everything that meant to your dad, who you now are), so a four banger might not cut it, even if it has the stying and performance most six (or even eight) cylinder American cars have lately...

Mercury has something in the back of the showroom, but they don't really want to sell you, and it's called the Not-A-Mercury Capri. Which you manage to ignore indeed. Opels are more readily forgotten, without the encouragement.

Uh oh, by now, all your other standbys are extinct or have depressing opera windows (the "Dodge Charger" is now a Chrysler Cordoba. Don't ask what happened to the Roadrunner). Performance intermediates are over, for the time being. So much for the greasy charm of a chestwig.

Ehh, all those things are too big and thirsty anyway. The British invented the sports car, after all, so why not return to that?

The sportiest thing about Britain's cars lately is the classy masking tape-esque stripe apliques, lightening, courtesy of rust, and possibly a rotting sandwich tucked in some inaccessible part of the door panels... Emergency carbs, energy! MGs are in the black bumpered period, an XKE is a bloated, expensive barge with the V12, traversing what might be called the spectrum. A not-quite-horrible Lotus or Jensen Healey is also available, but only if your budget is suicidal and you're decent with a wrench (you typically either have to assemble such cars yourself, or reassemble the bits that fall off), those cars become a little basic anyway. A TR6 is like strapping all of Apollo XIII's forward thinking optimism to what is essentially a covered wagon.

And most worryingly, those descriptions only apply to days when these cars actually run...

At least the TR7 hasn't been invented yet. Comfort in that.

Your glassware was blown in Germany, so why not look there? You can wait a few minutes for a 924, an ok if not stunning car. But you can buy a 914 right now, if you like to rebuff jokes by making excuses like "it has a 911 suspension"... And a bug engine. A 911 is appealing and expensive, while having more horsepower than most things around...

But then there's that Datsun putting out similarly... An excuse which returns up when you look at 6 series BMWs... Expensive though, those.

The Italians, they were very pretty but half of them have already skeletized, or turned to brown lumps. Is that what the janitor's mopping up?

So you're down to either the 280Z, or a Capri, both of which offer 2.8 liters of 6 cylinder goodness, both look fetching in yellow. But as compared to the Z, fifty or sixty horsepower are too scared to peek out from behind the Capri's pushrods. The Capri looks... ok in the old fashioned way, but you want a bit of interstella... The Capri's live rear axle should just about do it in then.

It's decided:



But don't just love the 280 because everything around it was totally depressing and not up for the game!

Drive a 280 because it's a 240, plus 40. A bit stiffer, a bit more relaxed and mature feeling than its earlier, more high strung incarnation, but no less capable of putting out.

Future generations of Zs would also get downplayed, and the 280 is the first example of this phenomena; the 280 and 300ZX had turbo models that made them into seriously hot, world class cars, continuing a tradition of innovation, and most of them are still on blocks in people's driveways. Nowadays most collectors would prefer a lower performing 260 to a 280, mostly on the merits that although it's a more strangled car, it disguises this fact fairly well and is a carb switch away from better performance...

Any Z car feels modern beyond its time, but the 280 was the final incarnation to help set the template for modern sports cars, and as such is an especially refined car, though still remarkably raw. The 240 and 260 might give you more traditional, carbed charm, but who says a nice smooth idle and delivery don't have a charm of their own.

So have big bumper pride :D The rest of the car will eventually charm you into holding on to them as a badge of distinction...

...ALSO!!!

Managed to make it on the cover of Nissan Sport (with like, 300 other people, lol)