That' s my hobby. hobby (hob' ë)n., something that takes up most of your free time that you would never consider doing for a living.     When I was 16 my first car was an old Toyota that I shared with my brother. When it died a short time later I spent several years with no real direction, Chevys, Volkswagen, a couple of Fords that never made it to the road, and then in 1985 I drove my first Datsun. It was a red '69  510 station wagon, badly faded to pink, but I was hooked. I put in many hours to keep that car alive and spent many hours driving it including two road trips. One to the west coast and another to the east coast. This photo was taken in April 1986 just days after returning from the paint shop.     It was a sad day in November 1991 when I realized that I didn't have the resources to continue maintaining and driving that car. I was home on the day the "automobile recycler" dragged it's bare empty shell away. I saved all of the good mechanical parts.     About a year later while browsing through classified ads, I ran across a listing for a 1969 Datsun two door sedan. I was like a kid at Christmas when I called to find out it had not been sold yet and quickly arranged to go see it. I had already decided to buy it before I made the two and a half hour drive to go see it. To make a long story short I now have a '69 Datsun 510 that I will never part with.     Since then I have purchased a '75 Datsun 710, is there a pattern here? Am I nuts? It was owned by a man in his nineties who used to sneak out of the nursing home and go driving. He  had spent years collecting parts that he thought might come in handy someday. Since the car had only 18K miles on it and came with a truckload of parts, What Nissan Nut could pass up a deal like that? It passed the safety check with no trouble at all and I struck a deal that would pass the ownership to my brother who recently lost his '74 710.     It is affectionately known as the pumpkin and will also remain in service for many years. We drove it to Mexico City in December of 1993 following the old PanAm highway on the way there.     A bit of advice for anyone planning to drive down there, Don't let the Auto Club choose a route without the toll highways, you can save days in travel time on the toll roads and they are a lot less treacherous.      This photo was taken next to the old PanAm highway outside the town of Santa Maria.Check out the road it's barely two lanes wide, heavily travelled by trucks of all sizes and condition, has beautiful scenery, and boy does it twist! Here is something that might interest some of you. I took the pumpkin to the Ontario Z Car show and shine event in September of '97. here it is in the non Z category parked right beside Bruce's 510 Wagon. I have since purchased This 510 Wagon. What do you know, I've come full circle.   Images and Text Copyright © 1997 Frank Roggeband. Not responsible for the content of other sites linked to from here. For more information on the 510 visit:  The 510 web pages For those of you who own a Z-car:  Ontario Z-Car homepage