On the same weekend that Surtees won at Riverside, American automotive designer and racing driver Pete Brock won the preliminary Mirror Bell 100 race in a Hino Contessa 1300, a car unknown to the American crowds. But this was only the first step in a greater vision for Brock’s collaboration with the little-known Hino Motor Company.
Brock’s stunning new racing prototype, the Hino Samurai, was a groundbreaking car that incorporated the same flair of his previous Chevrolet Corvette Stingray and Shelby Daytona Coupé – both of which had raced in Japan. While the fragile 1.3-litre, inline-four Hino GR100 motor needed plenty of work just to crack 110 horsepower, the car was the lightest out of any prospective Japan GP entrant.
Its most striking feature was a movable rear wing element, introducing a concept popularized by Jim Hall and his Chaparral 2E/2F from the west, and bringing it to Japan, well before any of the major manufacturers like Nissan or Toyota had even thought of experimenting with aerodynamics. And if the Hino Samurai proved successful in Japan, Brock wanted to take the car to Le Mans.
Brock appointed himself as the driver, and actor Toshiro Mifune, fresh off his appearance as Izo Yamura in the 1966 film Grand Prix, as team manager. They boarded a plane from Los Angeles all the way to Japan to take part in the 1967 Japan Grand Prix.
On Tuesday, 2 May, the morning of time trials, Pete Brock’s Hino Samurai went through technical inspection, and was thoroughly examined by the Japan Automobile Federation (JAF) stewards in a tense scene. It was here that the Samurai’s journey came to an abrupt end: The car had failed technical inspection, and Pete Brock and the Hino Samurai were disqualified from the Japan Grand Prix.
The official statement from the Japan Automobile Federation (JAF) stewards said that the Hino Samurai did not meet the minimum ground clearance of 10 centimetres. Brock and Mifune’s team had to change the oil pan after an issue during testing, and the new part was said to be the culprit.
But Brock maintains to this day that the JAF’s decision to exclude their car on a technical infringement was the machination of cutthroat business on the part of Toyota Motor Company. Toyota were in the process of acquiring Hino in 1967, and surely, Toyota would not have wanted their future acquisition to upstage them in a race from which they voluntarily withdrew.
With that, the Hino Samurai became the first of four cars out of the thirteen that showed up for time trials, that didn’t make the starting grid. This year, a new rule required cars to clear a minimum time of 2 minutes, 20 seconds, to be eligible to race.
Takao Yoshida, in the yellow and red number 1 Daihatsu P-5, would miss the cut by one second. Hiroyuki Kukidome, in the yellow and blue number 2 Daihatsu, came even closer, but still missed the minimum time by an agonizing six-tenths of a second. Both P-5s failed to qualify with their underpowered four-cylinder engines. Aging privateer Yoshio Yamaguchi, in his number 5 Datsun Fairlady, never set a time at all.
So now there were just nine cars left to start the race.
On the back row of the grid were the two Lola T70-Chevrolets. A blue and black number 14 Lola was registered for a driver named “Rodney Clark” – which turned out to be a nom de course for its real pilot, American racer Don Nichols. Nichols’ Lola-Chevy was actually the same car driven by Parnelli Jones in the 1966 Can-Am Series.
However, both Lolas needed extensive modifications to conform to the Group 6 sports car regulations used for the Japan Grand Prix at the time. They needed a spare tyre installed, and extensive bodywork modifications to add headlights, and side windows to enclose the driver. Nichols’ makeshift bodywork was said to be constructed with plywood. Both cars were a bit unsightly, much heavier than the Porsches and Nissans, and so difficult to drive that it negated their massive advantage in horsepower.
After trying to sell his seat to a wealthy Japanese driver to no avail, Nichols would drive the #14 Lola himself. He did however, successfully import a second Lola T70 for driver Ginji Yasuda, who originally planned to drive his Jaguar XK-E that the raced in the last two Japan Grands Prix. Instead, Yasuda was now lining up eighth in a metallic orange #15 Lola that had been crudely reshaped into a closed-top coupé.
Former World Grand Prix motorcycle race winner Kunimitsu Takahashi qualified third in his red number 10 Nissan R380A-II. Takahashi won the GT support race for the 1966 Japan Grand Prix, and was driving in the main event for the first time. The other three Nissans occupied the second row: Moto Kitano, another ex-motorcycle racer, was 5th in the seafoam green number 9. The defending Japan Grand Prix champion, Yoshikazu Sunako, started sixth in his creme yellow number 12. Sunako joined Nissan from the Prince merger, as did Hideo Oishi, starting seventh in his blue number 11.
And then there were the three Porsche 906es, all of them imported to Japan by Tokyo dealership Mitsuwa Motors – and all of them starting on the front row. Shintaro Taki was fourth-fastest in the all-white #6 (Chassis: 906-120), the same chassis he drove in 1966, now with updated bodywork. Qualifying second was Tadashi Sakai, in the white and blue number 7 (Chassis: 906-149), a much different machine from the brutish Shelby Daytona that he drove in ‘66.
Super GT World 