There is a wealth of information in Road and Track(Road And Track said the 240Z had “styling, performance, and handling far ahead of anthing else” in its price range.”), Car and Driver( C&D named the Datsun/Nissan 240z the car of the year for 1971) , and most of the car magazines from the early 70s-not to mention Racing results(SCCA C production was dominated by the Z car 1970-78(Campionship winner every single year)-and later, winning the East African Safari 1971, 72 and ’73, et. all…that show the Datsun 240Z(Nissan 240Z) was the sports car that ate Porsche, Alfa, BMW, and a few more for breakfast, taught American sports cars how to handle(Motor Trend: “the 240z is a Group 5 racer by comparison to the Z/28″), and dealt the death blow to the English sports car market in America.
Kind of tough consider Japanese cars “second class citizens” when they were the named as royalty by all of the American car magazines in terms of sales(then and now the best selling sports car of all time), performance, and value. Lets not forget the induction of Yutaka Katayama into the Automotive Hall of Fame at the time of the 300ZX-but primarily for his efforts in building Nissan America with the 240Z and the small pickup trucks, and his continued efforts with the Z car.

The 300ZX is one of the 10 best cars of the 90s, but Japanese cars were seen as second class sitizens up until the 240Z-the car that started the Tuner craze-before it no other import had the following to develop an aftermaket following.
William Stokes-for the record, I own a 1972 240Z and a 1993 300ZX convertible-and love them both for different reasons.

It also caused Ferrari to seriously up their game. Many of the improvements on the 355 were a direct result of the new competition from Japan…

I mean to say that your researching skills are below subpar. Saturn was formed in the mid 80′s by GM. Period. They didn’t form out of thin air and GM later scooped them up. I mean, honestly, if you spent just 10 minutes of simple research or even just looking at the body lines of a 1st generation Saturn you could figure it out.

Wow.