Datsun 280ZX (S130)
Why 7.2: Datsun looked at what buyers were actually doing with a 240Z and built that instead: a longer, quieter, better-equipped coupé with a T-bar roof. It works, and it has left the S130 as the cheap Z for four decades — which is the only reason a rust-free 1980s Japanese six-cylinder sports car is still attainable, and why the ones that exist get driven rather than stored.
Layout
Natural habitat
Ride comfort
Sound
The L28E is the same unhurried single-cam six as the 240Z’s, but fuel injection has replaced the twin SUs and taken the breathy induction honk with them. Add the insulation Nissan packed into the S130 and what is left is a muted version of a good noise. A grand tourer’s six, deliberately.
6-cylinder · naturally aspirated · 6,000 rpm redline · rated 5.4 / 10 for engine sound
Market value
Median asking price, good condition · €12k (1981) → €19k (2026), trending up · illustrative data
Child seats · ISOFIX
Built before ISOFIX existed, so there are no anchor points at all. A child seat here is a seatbelt installation in the only passenger seat there is.
Derived from production years and seating layout, not a per-car source. ISOFIX was standardised as ISO 13216 in 1997, required on new EU model types from 2011 and on all new EU cars from 2014.
The long version
By 1978 the Z had been on sale for nine years and Nissan knew exactly who was buying it, because it had asked. The answer was not the club racers who had claimed the 240Z as their own; it was people who wanted a good-looking coupé with air conditioning that did not break. So the S130 arrived longer, heavier and far better insulated, with more equipment, a 2+2 alongside the two-seater, and from 1980 a T-bar roof — a first for the Z and the detail that dates it hardest. It sold in very large numbers and the enthusiast press has been sniffy about it ever since. Two things are worth setting against that. The first is the 1981 280ZX Turbo, which put an L28ET and 180 hp under the bonnet and was among the earliest turbocharged cars Nissan sold in America. The second is that Paul Newman raced one for Bob Sharp Racing, which suggests the underlying car was not the sofa it is usually accused of being. Prices tell the rest: the 240Z became an investment and the 280ZX did not, so the ZX is the one still bought with driving money rather than auction money. That gap is closing now, slowly, from a very long way behind.