Datsun
Datsun was a Japanese automobile manufacturer brand owned by Nissan. Datsun's original production run began in 1931. From 1958 to 1986, only vehicles exported by Nissan were identified as Datsun. Nissan phased out the Datsun brand in March 1986, but relaunched it in June 2013 as the brand for low-cost vehicles manufactured for emerging markets. Nissan considered phasing out the Datsun brand for a second time in 2019 and 2020, eventually discontinuing the struggling brand in April 2022.
In 1931, DAT Motorcar Co. chose to name its new small car "Datson", a name which indicated the new car's smaller size when compared to the DAT's larger vehicle already in production. When Nissan took control of DAT in 1934, the name "Datson" was changed to "Datsun", because "son" also means "loss" in Japanese, and to honour the sun depicted in the national flag - thus the name Datsun: Dattosan. The Datsun name is internationally well known for the 510, Fairlady roadsters, and the Z and ZX coupés.
History
Origin of Datsun
Before the Datsun brand name came into being, an automobile named the DAT car was built in 1914, by the Kaishinsha Motorcar Works, in the Azabu-Hiroo District in Tokyo. The new car's name was an acronym of the initials of the company partners:- Kenjiro Den
- Rokuro Aoyama
- Meitaro Takeuchi :ja:竹内明太郎|
The DAT corporation had been selling full size cars to Japanese consumers under the DAT name since 1914. In 1930, the Japanese government created a ministerial ordinance that allowed cars with engines up to 500 cc to be driven without a license. DAT Automobile Manufacturing began development of a line of 495 cc cars to sell in this new market segment, calling the new small cars "Datson" – meaning "Son of DAT". The name was changed to "Datsun" two years later in 1933.
The first prototype Datson was completed in the summer of 1931. The production vehicle was called the Datson Type 10, and "approximately ten" of these cars were sold in 1931. They sold around 150 cars in 1932, now calling the model the Datsun Type 11. In 1933, government rules were revised to permit engines, and Datsun increased the displacement of their microcar engine to the maximum allowed. These larger displacement cars were called Type 12s.
By 1935, the company had established a true production line, following the example of Ford, and were producing a car closely resembling the Austin 7. There is evidence that six of these early Datsuns were exported to New Zealand in 1936, a market they then re-entered in May 1962. In 1937, Datsun's biggest pre-war year, 8593 were built, with some exported to Australia in knock-down form.
After Japan went to war with China in 1937, passenger car production was restricted, so by 1938, Datsun's Yokohama plant concentrated on building trucks for the Imperial Japanese Army.
When the Pacific War ended, Datsun would turn to provide trucks for the Occupation forces. This lasted until car production resumed in 1947. As before the war, Datsun closely patterned their cars on contemporary Austin products: postwar, the Devon and Somerset were selected. For Datsun's smaller cars, such as the DB and DS series, they depended on designs based on the pre-war Austin Seven. The heavier trucks, meanwhile, were based on Chevrolet's 1937 design with an engine of Graham-Paige design. Nissan also built the 4W60 Patrol, based on the Willys Jeep, and the 4W70 Carrier, based on the Dodge M37. Not until January 1955 did Datsun offer a fully indigenous design.
That year, the Occupation returned production facilities to Japanese control, and Datsun introduced the 110 saloon and the 110-based 120 pickup.
Datsun in the American market
The use of the Datsun name in the American market derives from the name Nissan used for its production cars. In fact, the cars produced by Nissan already used the Datsun brand name, a successful brand in Japan since 1932, long before World War II. Before the entry into the American market in 1958, Nissan did not produce cars under the Nissan brand name; the company only produced trucks. Their in-house-designed cars were always branded as Datsuns. Hence, for Nissan executives it would be only natural to use such a successful name when exporting models to the United States. Only in the 1960s did Datsun begin to brand some automobile models as Nissans, like the Patrol and a small test batch of about 100 Cedric luxury sedans, and then not again until the 1980s. The Japanese market Z-car also had Nissan badging. In the United States, the Nissan branch was named "Nissan Motor Corporation in U.S.A.", and chartered on September 28, 1960, in California, but the small cars the firm exported to America were still named Datsun.Corporate choice favored Datsun, so as to distance the parent factory Nissan's association by Americans with Japanese military manufacture. In fact Nissan's involvement in Japan's military industries was substantial. The company's car production at the Yokohama plant shifted towards military needs just a few years after the first passenger cars rolled off the assembly line, on April 11, 1935. By 1939 Nissan's operations had moved to Manchuria, then under Japanese occupation, where its founder and President, Yoshisuke Ayukawa, established the Manchurian Motor Company to manufacture military trucks.
Ayukawa, a well-connected and aggressive risk taker, also made himself a principal partner of the Japanese Colonial Government of Manchukuo. Ultimately, Nissan Heavy Industries emerged near the end of the war as an important player in Japan's war machinery. After the war ended, Soviet Union seized all of Nissan's Manchuria assets, while the Occupation Forces made use of over half of the Yokohama plant. General MacArthur had Ayukawa imprisoned for 21 months as a war criminal. After release he was forbidden from returning to any corporate or public office until 1951. He was never allowed back into Nissan, which returned to passenger car manufacture in 1947 and to its original name of Nissan Motor Company Ltd. in 1949.
American service personnel in their teens or early twenties during the Second World War would be in prime car-buying age by 1960, if only to find an economical small second car for their growing family needs. Yutaka Katayama, former president of Nissan's American operations, would have had his personal wartime experiences in mind supporting the name Datsun. Katayama's visit to Nissan's Manchuria truck factory in 1939 made him realise the appalling conditions prevalent on the assembly lines, leading him to abandon the firm. In 1945, near the end of the war, Katayama was ordered to return to the Manchurian plant, however he rebuffed these calls and refused to return.
Katayama desired to build and sell passenger cars to people, not to the military; for him, the name "Datsun" had survived the war with its purity intact, not "Nissan". This obviously led Katayama to have problems with the corporate management. The discouragement felt by Katayama as regards his prospects at Nissan, led to his going on the verge of resigning, when Datsun's 1958 Australian Mobilgas victories vaulted him, as leader of the winning Datsun teams, to national prominence in a Japan bent on regaining international status.
The company's first product to be exported around the world was the 113, with a proprietary four-cylinder engine.
Datsun entered the American market in 1958, with sales in California. By 1959, the company had dealers across the U.S. and began selling the 310. From 1962 to 1969 the Nissan Patrol utility vehicle was sold in the United States, making it the only Nissan-badged product sold in the US prior to that name's introduction worldwide decades later.
From 1960 on, exports and production continued to grow. A new plant was built at Oppama, south of Yokohama; it opened in 1962. The next year, Bluebird sales first topped 200,000, and exports touched 100,000. By 1964, Bluebird was being built at 10,000 cars a month.
For 1966, Datsun debuted the Sunny/1000, allowing kei car owners to move up to something bigger. That same year, Datsun won the East African Safari Rally and merged with Prince Motors, giving the company the Skyline model range, as well as a test track at Murayama.
The company introduced the Bluebird 510 in 1967. This was followed in 1968 with the iconic 240Z, which proved affordable sports cars could be built and sold profitably: it was soon the world's #1-selling sports car. It relied on an engine based on the Bluebird and used Bluebird suspension components. It would go on to two outright wins in the East African Rally.
Katayama was made Vice President of the Nissan North American subsidiary in 1960, and as long as he was involved in decision making, both as North American Vice President from 1960 to 1965, and then President of Nissan Motor Company U.S.A. from 1965 to 1975, the cars were sold as Datsuns. "What we need to do is improve our car's efficiency gradually and creep up slowly before others notice. Then, before Detroit realizes it, we will have become an excellent car maker, and the customers will think so too. If we work hard to sell our own cars, we won't be bothered by whatever the other manufacturers do. If all we do is worry about the other cars in the race, we will definitely lose."