KNOWLEDGE: All 240Z / 260Z / 280Z / Fairlady Z S30 / S31 Body Colors

For our S30.world Museum in Buren (NL), I was asked to make an overview of all available body colors, so we could put a sample of every Factory paint on the wall. There are a few websites which list the body colors, but I quickly realized that they’re all incomplete or partially wrong. So I spent a few hours flipping through dozens of factory documents from my archive, to find every color that was ever put on an S30 / S31 chassis. And I counted a whopping 29 colors!

Disclaimer
As with all my knowledge articles, I tried my very best to get all the information from trustworthy and official sources. However, I cannot guarantee that all information is 100% correct. If you have any correction, input or additional information, I appreciate if you let me know. I’ll update this post whenever I find something to add or change. I am not a professional journalist, but I put countless unpaid hours of work and years of research into this post and spent quite a bit of money to source a lot of original factory documentation, so please ask, before you copy anything. Thank you.

1. Introduction:
Upon its release in late 1969, only a handfull of colors were available globally. But then every year new colors got added, metallic colors got introduced, and some colors got replaced with a more modern version of a similar previous paint. The colors varied in different markets. Some were only used in the Japanese Domestic market, while another color pallette was used for export. That doesn’t mean that all those colors were available in all countries, though. Many local import companies decided only to sell cars in a few colors they thought would be sucessful in their specific market, and to keep stocks of different variations low.

2. Sources:
So where can one find which color was available in which market in which year? There are several sources to puzzle it together.

Color sample charts:
In some countries, for e.g. UK, the local Datsun import company released color sample charts for all models every year, which is a good source to see what colors were available which year in a specific market:
Here you can find loads of scanned high-resolution Original Datsun body color and fabric sample charts from my private collection (Link)

Parts Catalogues
For the Export markets, all available colors are listed in the Spare parts catalogue, both as large can and small touch-up cans. But, again, not all listed colors were available in all markets, as local dealers (for e.g. Datsun Switzerland) decided to only import and sell a few colors from the palette, which they considered their customers would be interested in.

Brochures
For the Japanese market, you can find the body color options listed in the sales brochures, which is not very common in other market brochures:

Technical bulletin books (Introduction of new models):
A very good source are the service bulletin books. They list the changes for each year and model with further description. Both introduction and changes, as seen here in the export market bulletin 266:

Or here a Japanese bulletin which lists some of the the JDM-only colors (for e.g. Marron aka “Maroon”, a popular color choice for the Japanese G-nose version):

Technical Service bulletins (changes and service procedures)
Special colors, which were only available for specific limited edition models like the ZZZAP and the “Black pearl” edition, can be found in the technical service bulletins, as shown here in the TS78-014 black pearl color code 638 for the 280Z, including the mixing recipe for various paint suppliers (Picture shows DuPont recipe):

3. Body Color Overview:
To understand which color was available which year in which market, I made the following overview of all Available S30 / S31 body colors.
– Remark 1: Not every listed color was available in every export market. Some countries’ Datsun importers decided to only import certain body / upholstry color combinations which they thought will sell good in their market, and to keep the stock of different variations as small as possible, even if Nissan offered additional colors / combinations from the factory.
– Remark 2: In the Japanese market, some colors were only available to certain model variations (S30-S = standard, S30-L = Luxury, PS30 = Z432 and HS30-H (240ZG), etc., so not every body color was available on every model specification. My list doesn’t specify which model was available in which color.
– Remark 3: The years marked in my list are the years they got introduced or listed by factory documentation. But the colors would usually not be introduced on the 1st of January, but somewhere during the year. So certain colors, listed for e.g. for the year 1970, might have only been available for the last two months of that year. Also note that production and appearance in the market is usually a few months apart. If a car got produced in November 1970 in a certain color for the first time, it might only appear in an export market car registered in February 1971 for the first time. Also the technical documentation was not always up to realilty. The factory might have introduced new colors a few weeks or even months before the updated technical documentation would officially be released. So please take the listed years always + / – a few months and just as a rough indicator.

Click here to gett the full pdf with all the colors: S30 available colors.pdf

3.1. Remarks to some colors:
– 914 (Sunshine yellow) was a typo mistake in the Japanese Z-1 Introduction Bulletin. The Japanese sales brochures and later documents confirm that it should correctly be 919 sunshine yellow
The Z-1 Bulletin also mentions the meaning of the colors like Silver grey stands for “mechanical brilliance”, sunshine yellow for “awakening” and racing green for “power”, etc.

– 901 silver / grey: Some colors changed their official names. For e.g. from “racing green” to simply “green”. A special mention needs to be made for 901, which changed from light grey (or sometimes written “light gray”) metallic to “Silver (grey) metallic”. According to some documents, this was made to avoid confuson with the other, newly introduced colors. For some reason, 901 remained listed with both names (albeit with the same part number) in the spare parts catalogues:

– The Japanese 1975 Sales brochure mentions that Red 110 is only available upon special request for both the 2-seater and 2by2 versions:

– The US-market had two limited editions 280Z’s towards the end of the production life. In late 1976 / 1977 the 280-Zzzap got introduced in 411 Sunburst yellow, and in 1978 the Black Pearl appearance package with 638 Black Pearl metallic. Both editions had additional decorative stripes and rear window louvres, etc.

– The German 1976 Color sample chart lists 411 (Sunburst yellow) as an available standarad color for the 260Z in Germany. We think this was a mistake, and the US-market only 411 from the 1977 Zzzap special edition might have accidentally ended up in this chart. We have also never seen an S30 other than the Zzzap n this color. So our conclusion is that this was never actually availabe to S30’s other than the US-market only Zzzap special edition.
Note that 411 was though available on other Datsun models in Europe (for e.g. the 1984 Bluebird, etc.)

– Body color 510 (blue): You find that color listed as an S30 factory color for the export market 280Z on some websites and some paint manufacturer color charts (PPG Color code 15113), but I didn’t find it in any of my extensive factory documentation. 510 blue was definitely a Datsun / Nissan factory color, but I couldn’t find any proof that it was actually used for the S30 too. So this might have been a mistake by Paint manufacturers that was taken over by various websites. Therefore I didn’t include it in my list. There is at least one known S30 around in this color, but I am not sure if they were repainted in this color later, and never came from the factory like this.

– Some other websites list 314 (bronze metallic) which is wrong and should correctly be 301. Also other websites mention 215 (white) which should correctly by 216.

4. Notes:
In the North American market (USA and Canada), small 6 oz aerosol containers with touch-up paint and grey primer were included in the glove box with every new Datsun, but they stopped delivering new cars with those around 1st of April 1972, as the following technical service bulletin and the parts bulletin NPD72-014 explain:

So, like with every Z-related topic: One might think it’s easy and that you know all the colors, but once you start digging deeper, you realize there is way more than expected. 29 Different colors for one car model (with all sub-variants) within 10 years is quite the number, and something any big car manufacturer likes to limit to a handfull of colors today. To reduce the production costs and of course also spare parts variations. From today’s perspective, it’s nice to see how the colors and demand evolved in the different markets over the years, in a time where globalization and cars generally where just at the beginning of a big boom.

Oh, and if you like to know how to properly do repairs or paint a car, then there is a whole book by Nissan which explains the details of paint and how to apply it properly, but I’ll save that for a future story: