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The 1976 Datsun Lineup of Cars and Trucks

October 30, 2014 by Greg

Straight from the DatsunForum vault, here’s a nice scan of the 1976 Datsun full-line brochure, exactly like you might have found in a Datsun dealer in late 1975.

Imagine walking into a showroom in September 1975, seeing a sleek zero-mile 1976 280Z in bright red with a gorgeous black vinyl interior, sitting next to a new Lil’ Hustler 620 pickup – and over there in the corner is a new 610 Coupe with the optional rocker panel decals. Turn around and admire the funky but sporty B-210 in bright yellow, and try not to ignore the dark green 710 wagon, just waiting to become some family’s faithful new transportation.

Here’s hoping these images help you with your Datsun restoration, or just take you on a trip back into the history of Datsun motoring. (click images for full-size pics)

1976_datsun_full_line_brochure (1) 1976_datsun_full_line_brochure (2)

1976_datsun_full_line_brochure (3) 1976_datsun_full_line_brochure (4)

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1976_datsun_full_line_brochure (9) 1976_datsun_full_line_brochure (10)

1976_datsun_full_line_brochure (11) 1976_datsun_full_line_brochure (12)

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Nissan Sales Talk, 1984 – 50th Anniversary

October 30, 2014 by Greg

Another awesome old document from the DatsunForum archives, scanned here for your enjoyment! (click thumbnails for larger images)

Nissan_sales_talk_may_1984 (1)
The origin of the Datsun name and the Nissan Motor Company can be traced back to 1911, when Masujuro Hashimoto founded the Kwaishinsha Motor Car Works. What appears to have been his first car, a small 10-horsepower passenger automobile, was exhibited in 1914 and received an award. Hashimoto’s backers were three businessmen named Den, Aoyama, and Takeuchi, and the car took its name from their initials: DAT.

Nissan_sales_talk_may_1984 (2) Nissan_sales_talk_may_1984 (3) Nissan_sales_talk_may_1984 (4)

This company ran into financial trouble and was reorganized in 1918 as the Kwaishinsha Company, Ltd., which produced a small, sports-type two-seater that became the “son of DAT,” or Datson. However, the English letter combination S-O-N as pronounced in Japanese sounds like an expression for losing money, and it seems to have been important to have a name for the car that could be spelled in English. At any rate the difficulty was resolved by changing “son” to “sun,” which has a good connotation in both English and Japanese.

Nissan_sales_talk_May_1984 (5) Nissan_sales_talk_may_1984 (6) Nissan_sales_talk_may_1984 (7)

Production remained very limited, and after the disastrous earthquake of 1923, which destroyed many of Japan’s automobile factories, the DAT firm found it necessary to merge with the Jitsuyo Jidosha Seizo (Practical Automobile Manufacturing) Company as the DAT Jidosha Seizo Company, Ltd. The merger was effective in 1926. The combined company was still small, but in 1932 it introduced a new Datsun line, a small car with a 500cc engine, which marked the beginning of regular, continuous production of motor vehicles carrying the Datsun name.

Nissan_sales_talk_may_1984 (8) Nissan_sales_talk_may_1984 (9) Nissan_sales_talk_may_1984 (10)

In 1933, the DAT Jidosha Seizo Company underwent a reorganization and a year after that was renamed Nissan Motor Company, Ltd. (Japan Industries), with a capital of 10 million yen. Between then and 1938, when passenger car production stopped, Nissan made its first standard-size automobiles, introduced mass-production techniques, and shipped out its first few exports.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Nissan “clublife” Newsletter Spring-Summer 2014

October 29, 2014 by Greg

The “clublife” newsletter is published for the Japanese market on a quarterly basis by Nissan – I guess you could call it the JDM equivalent of NICOclub, but in printed form!

Anyhow, we periodically receive copies of clublife from our Japanese contacts, and I figured I’d share a copy with the members.

There’s a historical timeline, highlighting some notable points in Nissan’s history, some great pics from the Japan Automobile Museum, as well as some event photos from various gatherings around the islands.

I hope you enjoy the scans (click for larger images):

clublife (1) clublife (2) clublife (3) clublife (4) clublife (5) clublife (7) clublife (6) clublife (8) clublife (9) clublife (10) clublife (11) clublife (12)

Filed Under: Uncategorized

How Datsun Discovered America

September 9, 2014 by Greg

In 1960, Nissan banished a rebellious executive to California. Once in the driver’s seat, Yutaka Katayama took off like nobody’s business.

by David Halberstam, as appeared in ESQUIRE Magazine, October 1986

[This article was adapted from The Reckoning, by William Morrow]

Yutaka Katayama was sent to America in 1960 to handle Nissan’s first exports to that distant and pervasively rich land, not because he was a rising star but because he was in disgrace in Tokyo, and this assignment was a form of exile. What better place for a Japanese auto executive in disgrace than the world’s greatest center of automobile manufacturing, where success was dubious and failure highly likely?

Katayama was a conservative man of upper-class origins, and his privileged childhood had made him somewhat different from other Japanese. For one thing, it had given him a desire for a higher level of independence. For another, it had made him an absolute car nut. His father had owned two very sporty cars, and it was Katayama’s love of cars that brought him to work at Nissan: it was about cars, and he was about cars, and he not only wanted to drive them, he wanted to build them.

At one point, frustrated with the politics of Nissan, he had even designed his own car, an ultralight auto for a country where gas was extremely expensive. The Flying Feather, it was called, and he and a friend put it together in the second story of a Tokyo building – but couldn’t get it out for a trial run. In a nation filled with laws and restrictions and inhibitions, racing around in a sports car was to Katayama the highest form of freedom.

Katayama Flying Feather

By the late Fifties, he had fallen into disgrace with his superiors because of his opposition to the company’s new, powerful, management-propelled union. Katayama, a man of the old order, was essentially anti-union. In his perfect world, managers would deal with workers in an honorable Japanese manner that reflected well on both labor and management and that accorded both sides dignity. In a slightly less perfect world where there had to be unions, management would make the decisions, and labor would go through the motions of pretending that it had fought valiantly to improve things. That kind of relationship he could understand. Labor as an extension of management was something he could not. In the early Fifties, when Nissan had been under assault from a leftist union, Katayama had opposed the leftists. That had not bothered his superiors. But his crucial mistake was to oppose the new management-sponsored union, which had crushed the leftist one. That had sealed his fate.

His friends warned him to keep his mouth shut, but he never listened. When almost everyone else in middle management was joining the union, Katayama stood on the sidelines. In 1958, desperate to get away from the company’s politics, Katayama led a triumphant team of Nissan drivers through an arduous auto rally in Australia. He returned a national hero – only to find that his job had been given away to a union member. Two years later, when management asked him to check out Nissan’s prospects in California, he jumped at the chance. The decision to try exporting had been partially inspired by his success in Australia, and though he knew he was being banished, he was delighted nonetheless.

1958 Datsun Mobil Gas Rally

As a student Katayama had been sent to America by his father to expand his horizons, and he had loved it. Now. as a grown man living in Los Angeles, he was struck again by the sense of freedom. Americans believed they could do whatever they wanted, the way they wanted, when they wanted. The lack of formality, symbolized by the absence of blue suits, cheered him. In Japan, if you were to transact serious commerce, you wore a blue suit. If you were not entitled to wear a blue suit, you wore a laborer’s work clothes. But in America there was no telling what a man did by looking at his clothes.

In addition, and most miraculously, it did not seem to matter that he was Japanese: what mattered to the Americans was what he was selling and what the terms were: Was it a good deal? An American trying to do business in Japan, he was sure, would never have found as many doors open as Katayama was finding open to him. Yutaka Katayama, to his amazement, found himself more at home in California than he had been in Tokyo. Soon the American job became a permanent one. No one else seemed eager to go to America, that alien, often terrifying place, so he was placed in charge of Nissan’s operations in the western United States. He sent for his family. What was supposed to have been a brief tour lasted seventeen years.

Next – The challenges of the early years: How Datsun Discovered America, Part 2

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Datsun USA Dealer Directory 1975-1976

September 1, 2014 by Greg

By late 1975, Datsun had nearly 1,000 registered dealerships in 49 of the United States. Datsun was selling cars in record numbers, due in no small part to the fuel crisis. This was the year Datsun (and Toyota) passed Volkswagen as the leading import car in US sales.

This brochure is from our private collection, and documents the name (and location) of each of the Datsun dealerships in the US in 1975-76.

Click images for larger size.

datsun_dealer_directory datsun_dealer_directory (1) datsun_dealer_directory (2) datsun_dealer_directory (3) datsun_dealer_directory (4) datsun_dealer_directory (5) datsun_dealer_directory (6) datsun_dealer_directory (7) datsun_dealer_directory (8) datsun_dealer_directory (9) datsun_dealer_directory (10) datsun_dealer_directory (11) datsun_dealer_directory (12) datsun_dealer_directory (13) datsun_dealer_directory (14) datsun_dealer_directory (15) datsun_dealer_directory (16) datsun_dealer_directory (17) datsun_dealer_directory (19) datsun_dealer_directory (20) datsun_dealer_directory (21) datsun_dealer_directory (22) datsun_dealer_directory (23) datsun_dealer_directory (24) datsun_dealer_directory (25) datsun_dealer_directory (26)

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Nissan Facts Booklet, 1985 – Wrapping up the Change from Datsun to Nissan

August 29, 2014 by Greg

When Nissan Motor Company decided to change its brand from Datsun to Nissan in the US market, it was one of the most disastrous brand name shifts in history. In fact, the decision has been used as a case study in business schools worldwide of how NOT to rebrand a company.

In 1960, Nissan entered the US market using the old Datsun name — perhaps in part to counter the anti-Japanese sentiment that remained fresh in a post-war era. By 1981, the Datsun brand was strong in many other countries, even though the company was still selling vehicles under the name Nissan in Japan.

In the early 1980’s, the awareness level of Nissan in the U.S. was only 2% as compared to 85% for the Datsun name. In the fall of 1981, a decision was announced to change the name from Datsun to Nissan in the U.S. During the 1982-1984 model years, the products were changed gradually to implement the name change. For instance, 1982 models had “Nissan” on the grille, “Datsun” on the left of the trunklid and “Nissan” on the right. Other Datsuns simply had “by Nissan” included in their emblem. Some models switched completely in 1983, such as the Datsun 510 being replaced by the Nissan Stanza. For the 1984 model year, the name change transition was complete.

As a function of the change, Nissan Motor Corporation issued several documents to assist with the explanation of the name change – not just for the car buying public, but for its own employees.

The following brochure (and its accompanying introductory letter), is one such document… We’ve scanned this 1985 brochure from our collection to share with you – We hope you enjoy this little piece of Datsun history! [Click to reveal the full-size images]

Nissan_Facts_Booklet_1985 (1)

Nissan_Facts_Booklet_1985 (2) Nissan_Facts_Booklet_1985 (3) Nissan_Facts_Booklet_1985 (4) Nissan_Facts_Booklet_1985 (5) Nissan_Facts_Booklet_1985 (6) Nissan_Facts_Booklet_1985 (7) Nissan_Facts_Booklet_1985 (8) Nissan_Facts_Booklet_1985 (9)

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Datsun “slide chart” pocket calculators

August 19, 2014 by Greg

Long before the Internet, and even before the hand-held calculator, people needed a way to make quick calculations without doing a lot of mathematical computation. The slide rule, a 17th-century device, rapidly became the most commonly used calculation tool in science and engineering.

pickett_slide_rule

The slide rule was the inspiration for countless pocket calculators, referred to as “slide charts.”

Typically made of cardboard or plastic, a slide chart was typically task-specific, and these handy devices could be tucked in a pocket for quick reference. For decades, the slide chart was the go-to gadget for engineering, aviation, photography, finance, construction, machine work, surveying, and even cooking!

An example of a common slide chart:
slide_chart_1

Of course, it goes without saying that there are people who collect these, and they’re still used in certain industries today. But we’re interested in Datsun collectibles, so here’s a few Datsun-specific slide charts that I think you’ll find interesting – Enjoy!

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datsun_fuel_mileage_calculator

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datsun_side_bearing_shim_calculator_2

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datsun_side_bearing_shim_calculator_r

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Datsun Fairlady Sports and Bluebird Road Test – Motor Trend, 1961

July 20, 2014 by Greg

In 1961, Motor Trend predicted, “Datsun will soon have a lot of Americans driving cars marked Made in Japan.” There’s no question they were right, and the road test they conducted on the Bluebird and Fairlady Roadster are pretty awesome to read, 53 years later!

1961 Datsun Fairlady Bluebird Road Test (1)1961 Datsun Fairlady Bluebird Road Test (2)1961 Datsun Fairlady Bluebird Road Test (3)1961 Datsun Fairlady Bluebird Road Test (4)1961 Datsun Fairlady Bluebird Road Test (5)1961 Datsun Fairlady Bluebird Road Test (6)1961 Datsun Fairlady Bluebird Road Test (7)

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Datsun 411 Sedan Road Test – Car and Driver, 1967

July 20, 2014 by Greg

In 1967, Datsun was still an unknown quantity to the American motoring public. Car & Driver reviewed the 1967 Datsun 411 in both sedan and wagon form – they proclaimed several of its virtues, while bemoaning other characteristics. Either way, it’s a great read for early Datsun enthusiasts!

Datsun_411_review_1967 (1) Datsun_411_review_1967 (2) Datsun_411_review_1967 (3) Datsun_411_review_1967 (4)

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Books About Datsuns!

July 19, 2014 by Greg

The following is a listing of books pertaining to Datsun vehicles over the years. Some may be out of print, but can often be found by searching ebay, Amazon, used bookstores, or even your local library!

How to Modify Datsun 510, 610, 240Z Engines & Chassis
Author: Bill Fisher & Bob Waar
Publisher: HP Books 1973
ISBN: 0912656093
datsun_books_2
How to Hotrod and Race Your Datsun
Author: Bob Waar
Publisher: Steve Smith Autosports 1984
ISBN: 0936834412
Description: A trimmed down version of the book above.
datsun_books_3
How to Modify Your Nissan and Datsun OHC Engine
Author: Frank Honsowetz
ISBN: 1555611605
datsun_books_4
How to Rebuild your Datsun L-series engine
Author: Tom Monroe
ISBN: 1555611591
datsun_books_5
How to Keep Your Datsun L-Series Z-Series Nissan Alive
Author: Colim Messer
Publisher: John Muir Publications
Publication date: June 1986
ISBN: 031764890X
datsun_books_6
The UFO Back Issues Book
Publisher: Rex Jennett
Description: This is the complete collection of newsletters published by Rex Jennett, founder and president of the United Five-Ten Owners Club (UFO) from ’81 to ’89. This three-volume set contains over 600 pages of technical articles, photos, etc.

datsun_books_7
Datsun 510 Series Owner’s Workshop Manual
(Autobook 744), subtitled: 510 Series 1300, 1400, 1600, 1600SS
Author: by Kenneth Ball
Publisher: Autopress Ltd (England) 1973
ISBN: 0-85147-357-1
datsun_books_8
Datsun Service Repair Handbook 510, 610 & 710 1968-1976
Author: Alan Ahlstrand
Publisher: Clymer Publications 1978
ISBN: 0-89287-117-2
datsun_books_9
Datsun Tuneup For Everybody
Author: Paul Young
Publisher: Ten Speed Press, copyright 1980
ISBN: 0-89815-026-4
Description: This Datsun tuneup manual has been specifically designed to teach a person with absolutely no knowledge of auto mechanics exactly how to do a major tuneup on their Datsun (all models, 1968-1979). Each of the major steps of a complete tuneup is covered in detail. This book describes, step by step, what to do, exactly how to do it, and in addition, clearly illustrates each step with easy-to-follow diagrams.

datsun_books_11
Nissan Datsun: A History of Nissan Motor Corporation in U.S.A., 1960-1980
Author: by John B. Rae
ISBN: 0070511128
datsun_books_12
Illustrated Datsun/Nissan Sports Car Buyer’s Guide (Illustrated Buyer’s Guide)
Author: by John Matras
ISBN: 0760301360
datsun_books_13
The Stainless Steel Carrot
Author: by Sylvia Wilkinson
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co. 1973
ISBN: 0-395-17222-5
datsun_books_14
The Reckoning
Author: by David Halberstam
Publisher: William Morrow & Co. 1986
ISBN: 0-688-04838-2
Description: History of Nissan and Ford
datsun_books_15
The Japanese Automobile Industry
Author: by Michael Cusamano
Publisher: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard Univ 1985
ISBN: 0-674-47256-X
datsun_books_16
The Complete History of the Japanese Car 1907 to the Present
Author: by Marco Ruiz
Publisher: Portland House 1986
ISBN: 0-517-61777-3
datsun_books_17
Petersen’s Complete Book of Datsun
Author: Edited by Al Hall
Publisher: Petersen Publishing 1975
ISBN: 0-8227-0117-0
datsun_books_18
Petersen’s Complete Book of Datsun No. 2
Author: Edited by Al Hall
Publisher: Petersen Publishing 1977
ISBN: 0-8222-5007-4
photo not available_1
Datsun 510 & 240Z (Japanese text)
Author: N/A
Publisher: Grand Prix (?)
ISBN: 87687-149-3 C2053 P1800E
photo not available_1
’72 Import Car Buyer’s Guide
Author: Edited by Hans Tanner
Publisher: Petersen Publishing Co. 1972
ISBN: (no ISBN)
Description: Has a few articles on ’72 model Datsuns plus a couple pages with pictures on BRE tuning.
datsun_books_21
The Complete Book of Japanese Import Cars- Toyota, Datsun, Colt, Mazda, Honda, Subaru
Author: Edited by Miles Schofield
Publisher: Petersen Publishing Co. 1972
Library of Congress Card Catalog # 72-89053
Description: Has Datsun model roundup, maint/tuneup specs, 510 and 240Z carb rebuilds, 4 pages of BRE racing/parts w/ pictures

photo not available_1
Hot Rod Yearbook No. 11
Author: Edited by Miles Schofield
Publisher: Petersen Publishing Co. 1972
Library of Congress Card Catalog # 62-53185
photo not available_1
Datsun Performance Guide and Catalog
Author: Edited by Stuart Yale
Publisher: Copyright 1971 Phase III Publications, LTD NY
ISBN: None
photo not available_1
Tuning Datsuns
Author: Paul Davies
Publisher: Speedsport Motorbooks (England) 1978
ISBN: 0-85113-086-0
datsun_books_22
Japanese Exotic Cars
Author: Jack Doo; Henry Rasmussen
Publisher: Motorbooks International Publishers & Wholesalers, Inc. 1989
ISBN: 0-87938-333-X
Description: Interesting book with lots of nice photos of early Japanese cars, Toyota 2000GT, 240Z, Roadster, and an outstanding two-page shot of the BRE 510

photo not available_1
Datsun Saloons of the 1970’s
Author: Compiled by Trevor Alder
Publisher: Transport Source Books, Ltd. 1995
ISBN: 1858472849
Description: Reprinted articles from Britain’s Motor magazine, one article on the Datsun 1600 sedan, and two articles on the factory works 1600SSS rally cars

datsun_books_23
Classic Japanese Performance Cars
Author: Ben Hsu
Publisher: CarTech
ISBN-10: 1934709883

If you run across a book that’s not listed here, please let us know – We’d love to include it in our listing. Email us at [email protected]!

Filed Under: Uncategorized

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