“Just lost interest” are three words many of us with long-term projects can understand. If you’ve got a few coins in your pocket and can pick up a project for cheap, it always seems like a good idea to simply grab it and decide later what to do with it. In general, cars like this 1977 Datsun 280Z here on craigslist can seem like smart buys provided they aren’t rusty, as the market for vintage sports cars like this one continues to go up and up. This particular Z is equipped with an automatic and partially disassembled, however, so the asking price of just $800 seems more than fair.

$800 is nothing these days in the old-school Z car market, even for one with these options. Obviously, the early cars are the most desirable, as are those cars equipped with a manual gearbox. The later models got saddled with a few different detractions, from heavy-handed emissions equipment to big safety bumpers to heavier curb weights. The seller’s car also has the added “ding” of being somewhat torn down, so the next owner will have re-assembly to do if they choose to move this immobile project from his garage to their own.

As you can see, the 280Z looks reasonably straight (and dusty) down the sides. I can’t tell if the glass has been removed or if that back quarter window has been smashed out; it looks like there are the rough edges of a broken window visible. The Datsun is sitting on jack stands at the moment, so someone had big plans to re-do this car, and the seller mentions he grabbed it while on state’s orders with the National Guard in 2010. The Z was found in Tullahoma, TN, so it presumably has been a southern car for quite some time.

The engine doesn’t appear to have been messed with too much, and in general, it’s hard to tell what work the seller did do. The interior is still intact and underhood doesn’t appear to have been messed with, so was this a situation where he simply got the car home, put it up in the air, and decided what to do with it? Hard to say. You can see in one of the engine bay photos that the firewall is a robin’s egg blue in color which was absolutely a factory paint job back in the day (“Light Blue Metallic”, perhaps?); personally, I’d love to see it returned to that color if the next owner pursues a proper restoration.