Assuming I’d hit a bunch of dead-ends, not knowing what sort of response I’d get, I tentatively phoned the first number that came up. It rang for a while, then went to voice mail. I didn’t leave a message. I nearly left it there, but decided to try the next number. A male voice answered with a friendly “hello”. I asked if I could please speak to Ron Leonard. “I’m Ron Leonard”, said the voice. So I jumped right in and asked if they happened to have been an SCCA race car driver back in the 1970s. The phone reception was quite scratchy, and he didn’t understand what I said. I asked again, and he said, “No, I didn’t race in the 1950s, but I did race in the 1970s”. The line was so bad he thought I’d asked if he raced in the 1950s!

With that, I asked him if, by chance, he raced a Datsun 1200.Yes, indeed he had. Not quite believing my luck, I introduced myself. “My name is Steve Holmes. I’m phoning from New Zealand. I believe I have your old race car!” The response was even better than I’d hoped. He was so excited to learn his old car had survived. He began telling me the story of how he and his brother David built it from a street car in 1975, and spent the next several years developing it, making it faster and more competitive, and finally qualifying for the Runoffs in 1981. It was one of the most enjoyable periods of his life, and he was so pleased to learn the car had survived, and that it was to be restored back to how he and David raced it. As soon as he and I got off the phone, he phoned David and told him their old car had been discovered, and that it had ended up with a motorsport historian and writer from New Zealand. And this guy wanted to restore it back to how they had it, with the blue and silver paint, as it appeared at the 1981 SCCA Runoffs. It was David who designed the blue and silver paint scheme, which they ran for the first time in 1980.

Ron and I now email each other several times a week, and have become close friends. He has really enjoyed the whole process, and reliving his time racing the Datsun. He has also filled me in on the cars history with him, its various features and details, and the development carried out by he and David. This information has been invaluable, because of the details only he and David know about; things such as the layout of the dash, suspension design, etc. This is all information I’d otherwise have to guess at.

So, Ron and David were budget racers. They were typical of thousands of SCCA amateur racers who had day jobs and raced on the weekend, funding their own campaigns. Ron already owned the Datsun, and used it as his run about, carrying out deliveries for his pharmacy. In 1975, he attended a racing event at Road Atlanta, where Formula 5000 was the main drawcard, and with that, he got the racing bug. He and David decided to strip down the little Datsun, and build it for SCCA C/Sedan competition. He went to SCCA Driver School, and then began racing in early 1976. The car was pretty basic to begin with. Neither Ron nor David had ever been involved in racing, and Ron himself had no mechanical background. Ron bought a book by Smokey Yunick on building a small block Chevy engine, and, deciding a 4-cylinder was basically half a V8, combed through the book, learning as much as he could.