Paul Newman’s Championship-winning Datsun 280ZX for sale

By: Alex Affat, Unique Cars magazine

Date: 09.10.2018

Ex-Paul Newman 1979 SCCA championship-winning race car fully restored

Consummate ‘cool guy’ Paul Newman is a collectible mainstay, whose name seemingly attaches dollar figures to everything he’s ever touched.

Few more so than his old racecars, of which there are many as the actor boasted a racing career spanning 35 years. During which he won four national SCCA championships as a driver, and another eight as a team owner. He also placed second in the 1979 24 Hours of Le Mans, in Dick Barbour’s Porsche 935.

That same year, he won the C Production class in the SCCA championship with this very 1979 Datsun 280ZX race car.

The car is on sale via Motorcar Classics in the US and is fully documented and has just undergone a full nut and bolt restoration.

Included in the sale of the car is a variety of spare parts, including a spare engine and various body panels.

Various motorsports memorabilia also come with the car, including the original Bill Of Sale, signed by team owner Bob Sharp – further supporting chassis #100026’s validity as Paul Newman’s racecar.

No price is listed on the website, so you’ll have to get in contact with them if interested, however given the unique celebrity and motor racing provenance – we can safely suspect the old Datsun will fetch a princely sum.

The Porsche 935 that Paul Newman helped drive to second place at the 1979 Le Mans 24, sold for AUD$6.8 million at Gooding & Company’s 2016 Pebble Beach auction.

Furthermore, just last year – a rare Rolex 6239 Daytona with an even rarer art-deco dial sold for a whopping AUD$25 million after he popularised the special edition watch on a magazine cover in the 70s (…or so the story goes, but that’s for another time as this is a car website after all…).

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