Mr. K and the 1958 Australian Mobilgas Trial-winning, 10,000+ mile-surviving Datsun 210, part of two-car team he managed. Both finished.

in 1958 at the Mobilgas Trial—Round Australia, where two Datsun 210s were entered, the Fuji and the Sakura. Prior to the full-scale export of Datsun cars, the company wanted to test their performance and potential by entering them in the world’s most gruelling automobile race, covering 16,000 km of unpaved roads in the harsh Australian outback over the course of 19 days.

He recalled, ‘At the time, the Datsun 210 was powered by a 988cc OHV engine with a maximum output of 34ps. If you loaded it up with enough spare parts to handle the worst-case scenario on that route, it wasn’t much different from squishing eight people into this four-passenger car. Honestly, even though I was the team manager, I didn’t think we would win.’

Against all odds, however, the Fuji won the race in the class up to 1,000cc.

Yutaka Katayama was not a racecar driver like James Garner. He did not own a shop like Carroll Shelby that churned out neither hot-rods or limited-edition sportscars. Neither was he a pop-culture icon like Leonard Nimoy that had a taste for cars. He was, to put it bluntly, a salesman (he specialized in advertisement early in his career at Nissan). But not just any salesman, he was a salesman who was also a car guy.

https://www.nissan-global.com/EN/HERITAGE/LEGENDS/LEGEND_02/

https://itrolls.wordpress.com/2019/02/19/rip-yutaka-katayama-mr-k/#more-8522