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Nissan Bluebird 30th Anniversary Bathurst 1000 pole position
This weekend the Australian iconic motor race, the Bathurst 1000 is on. And it marks a special moment in the history of Nissan Motorsports.
30 years ago in 1984, the Nissan Bluebird Turbo driven by George Fury, made pole position. It was significant in a few different ways – it was the first Japanese car to make pole, and also was the first turbo powered car to get pole at this event.
What emphasised the effort was the time (2:13.85) was the fastest lap time recorded on the track ever. Note: The track at Mount Panorama was extended slightly by the addition of the ‘caltex chase’ in 1987 from 6.172 km to 6.213km, so this record will never be broken.
Below is the actual record breaking qualifying lap. Check out the first corner where George Fury starts to get sideways.
Fred Gibson reportedly later confirmed that the Bluebird had an illegal turbo boost adjuster on the dashboard, as well as the engine bay’s fire extinguisher spraying super cooled Halon at the cars intercooler which increased horsepower. Combined with a cold morning, and even snow a couple of hours prior to qualifying, conditions were perfect for a turbo charged car.
Because of the engine size, the turbo bluebird was in the (now defunct) Group C class (for cars up to and including 3000cc). The pocket rocket had a Z18T 1.8 litre, 4 cylinder engine with a single overhead camshaft and twin spark ignition. With the turbo, it generated around 350hp, pretty good for a small engine I must say. And it was good enough to keep up with the V8 Fords and Holdens in the Group A racing class, qualifying 3rd at Bathurst in 1982 (Masahiro Hasemi), 2nd in 1983 (Fury) and as mentioned above, 1st in 1984 (Fury).
The Turbo Bluebird had a great start to 1984 ‘The Great Race’, but due to an accident further back the race had to be restarted. Fury ended up finishing in 16th place overall.
At this years race, Michael Caruso and Dean Fiore’s #36 Norton Nissan Altima will adopt a retro-themed livery, depicting the colours worn on Fury’s 1984 Nissan Bluebird. In addition, and I wish that I was going to the race this year, Fury will drive the actual Bluebird Turbo that took him to that pole in 1984 in a special on-track demonstration. For more detailed information, check out the Nissan Australia website.
Another great article on the famous bluebird turbo can be found here.
Image source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/23965238@N04/2523282731/
Casio PB-100
Computing power was not cheap in the 1980’s. And this was also the time where things started to shrink in size. The PB100 was a one of those computers that had awesome power – read on to see how much!
Released in 1982, I bought my PB100 in 1983 and immediately started to program it in BASIC. The raw power of this computer that was the size of a calculator was pretty impressive – for it’s time.
It came with 1KB (NOT a typo) of RAM which resulted in only 544 bytes for BASIC, which was really limiting, even in 1983.
There was a memory module called the OR-1 (sad that I remember) that upgraded it to 1568 bytes of user memory. This allowed for many BASIC programs to be written. There are 10 area – P) to P9 where you would store your programs.
Courtesy of Google , the main circuits of the PB-100 were made up of two chips. Processor logics, ROM, display driver, and keyboard controller were integrated in a single CMOS VLSI chip HD61913, which had an external 4-bit bus. The second main component was a HD61914, which is a 8192-bit static RAM organized as 2048 words by 4 bits.
What accessories were available? Well, you could get a cassette interface (for storage, but I have not idea how it would of worked), plus there was also a thermal printer available for it. I never actually saw what these printers looked like or knew anyone that had one.
The PB100 was fairly cheap to run – 2 X CR2032 button cells powered the unit.
Did you have one? What did you you do with it? Leave a comment below.
867-5309
If you grew up in the 80s, you know exactly what this post is about.
867-5309/Jenny” was a song written by Alex Call and Jim Keller and performed by Tommy Tutone. Released in 1981, it did reach #1 on the US billboard charts in 1982, I think due to it’s very catchy chorus.
This song is about a guy who gets Jenny’s number off the bathroom wall. He can’t work up the courage to call her, but thinks he can have her if he ever does. Was the number and Jenny real?
Well, songwriter Alex Call came up with it while sitting under a plum tree. He said “Despite all the mythology to the contrary, I actually just came up with the ‘Jenny’ and the telephone number, and the music just sitting in my backyard. There was no Jenny”
I think it’s fair to say the number 867-5309 has reached a cult status. There are so many stories of people prank calling that number (as it is a valid number is many US states), the number has been used by many famous people and it has appeared in many other facets of life.
* Lets go a bit further into some trivia around this song:
* Tommy Tutone was actually the name of the band, not a singer
* A guy in New York tried to sell his 212-867-5309 number on eBay
* 867-5309 grosses more royalties today than it did when the song was climbing the charts in 1982
* Arnold Schwarzenegger put it on his Workout with Arnold
* Family Guy referenced the song
* Keith Urban sings 867-5309 at his live shows.
* In 1999, Brown University put in a campus exchange of “867.” The number 867-5309 went to 2 freshman girls, who got about 5 prank calls a day.
* 867-5309 has been referenced in several video game Easter eggs, including Duke Nukem, Everquest, and Deus Ex.
* 8675309 is a prime number. The chances of choosing a random 7-digit (telephone) number and finding that it is prime is about 13 out of 200 (about 6.5%).
Many women have used the fictional Jenny’s telephone digits to brush off unwanted male attention. More than one guy has gotten a girl’s phone number, only to discover it is 867-5309 🙂 . I would love to see how many times this has occurred.
Finally, here’s the song played live:
Check out this site for an interview with the girl in the Jenny music video. Her name was Karen Morton, who sadly passed away on 2/11/14.
How much of that trivia did you know? Do you have any more that I can add to the above list? Leave a comment below
New Smartphone App
We, at onlythe80s.com, are in the final stages of developing a smartphone app to compliment this site.
At this stage, the app will be only for Android based devices with iOS devices targetted for 2015.
Now for some input from our visitors – What would YOU like to see in the app? Leave a comment below.