Otto Explains — Legendary Cars

The Legendary Cars That Defined Nissan

Short Answer

Eight cars changed Nissan as a company. The Datsun 14 began its mass production, the Patrol started the four-wheel-drive line that made Nissan a familiar name in the Gulf, and the Sunny brought cars to ordinary Japanese families. The Bluebird 510 and the Fairlady Z won Nissan its place abroad, the Skyline 2000GT-R gave it a performance identity after the Prince merger, the LEAF made it an electric-car pioneer and the Qashqai opened up the crossover market.

How did Otto choose these cars?

Each car is here for what it changed at Nissan: how it built cars, where it sold them, what kind of company it became, or the technology it stood for. Fame on its own is not enough, so cars remembered mainly for their race wins or their design, such as the later GT-Rs and the Silvia, are in Otto’s article on ten iconic Nissans. The company timeline around these cars is in Otto’s history of Nissan.

How did the Datsun 14 turn Nissan into a mass producer?

It was the first car to come off Nissan’s new Yokohama line, in April 1935, and the first Nissan built on a fully integrated assembly line in what Nissan describes as Japan’s first automobile mass-production facility. The car itself was small, with a new 722 cc side-valve engine of 15 PS, a top speed of 80 km/h and a rabbit mascot designed by Ryuichi Tomiya. What changed was the scale: Nissan’s output rose from 202 cars in 1933 to 10,227 in 1937. The Yokohama Plant is still at work today as an engine factory, and it passed 40 million engines in June 2023.

Why did the Patrol change Nissan’s place in the Gulf?

The Patrol began in December 1951 as the 4W60, a Japan-only four-wheel drive with a 3.7-litre straight-six engine, and Nissan says it was the first car to climb Mount Fuji’s 2,500-metre ascent. It took the Patrol name in 1958, and in 1962 a G60 Patrol made what Nissan calls the first motor-vehicle crossing of Australia’s Simpson Desert. Its lasting effect was in the Middle East: Nissan says the Patrol’s roots in the region date to the 1950s and that it was one of the first dedicated four-wheel drives there. Nissan Middle East reported more than 20,000 Patrols sold in the Gulf in its 2020 fiscal year and over 1.9 million worldwide since 1951, and Nissan launched both the Y62 of 2010 and the all-new Patrol of 2024 in Abu Dhabi. Otto explains the Patrol’s generations in his guide to the Nissan model lineup.

How did the Sunny bring Nissan to ordinary families?

The first Datsun Sunny of 1966, the B10, was priced with the average salaried worker in mind, and Nissan credits it with starting the age of private cars and motorisation in Japan. Its name was chosen from about 8.5 million entries in a public campaign, and it sold 30,000 cars in its first five months. Its new A10 engine was a 988 cc OHV four-cylinder with 56 PS. The home market it helped create grew quickly: Nissan’s cumulative production in Japan passed 10 million cars in September 1972.

How did the Bluebird 510 open the way abroad?

The Bluebird 510, launched in August 1967, is the car Nissan credits with laying the groundwork for its growth in the United States, where Yutaka Katayama was building a dealer network. It also proved Nissan cars in the toughest rallies: in 1970 a Bluebird 1600SSS with the 1,595 cc L16 engine won the 18th East African Safari Rally outright, the first overall win for a Japanese car. By November 1969 Nissan’s cumulative exports had already passed 1,000,000 cars.

How did the Fairlady Z make Nissan a sports-car maker around the world?

The first Fairlady Z appeared in 1969 and was exported as the Datsun 240Z. Yutaka Katayama, whom Nissan regards as the father of the Z-car, recalled demand of about 4,000 cars a month, and over nine years more than 520,000 were sold worldwide, which Nissan calls the record for a single sports car model. Two Datsun 240Z cars finished first and second in the 1971 East African Safari Rally. The car gave Nissan a sports-car name that has lasted: the seventh-generation Z arrived in 2021.

How did the Skyline 2000GT-R give Nissan a performance identity?

It turned the Prince merger of 1966 into a Nissan legend. Launched in February 1969, the Skyline 2000GT-R took its know-how from Prince’s R380 racing car, and its S20 engine, a 1,989 cc four-valve DOHC straight six with 160 PS, is described by Nissan as the first four-valve DOHC engine in a mass-produced car. It won 52 races, 49 of them in a row, before the Nissan works team withdrew in October 1972, and fans called it Hakosuka. The GT-R name returned in 1989 and became a model of its own in 2007; Otto explains straight sixes and other layouts in his guide to engine designs.

How did the LEAF make Nissan an electric-car pioneer?

Nissan’s interest in electric cars was old, from the Tama electric car of 1947 to lithium-ion batteries developed with Sony from 1992 and the Prairie Joy EV of 1997, but the LEAF made it mainstream. On sale from December 2010 with a 24 kWh battery and about 200 km of range, it is called by Nissan the world’s first mass-market electric car, won European Car of the Year and World Car of the Year in 2011, and passed 500,000 sales in 59 markets by 2020. Its technology also fed e-POWER, the 2016 system in which an electric motor alone drives the wheels and a petrol engine only makes electricity. Otto compares these drives in his guide to hybrid, plug-in hybrid and electric cars.

How did the Qashqai change what Nissan sells?

The Qashqai, launched in September 2006 and built at Nissan’s Sunderland plant in Britain, is the car Nissan says created an entirely new segment: the compact crossover, with an SUV’s looks on a family-car footprint. By February 2016, 2,398,134 had been built, overtaking the Micra as Nissan’s highest-volume car in Europe. Nissan had opened the Sunderland company in 1984, and the Qashqai made it the centre of Nissan’s European crossover range.

Common Questions

  • Which Nissan sports car sold best? The first Fairlady Z, sold abroad as the Datsun 240Z: more than 520,000 were sold worldwide over nine years, which Nissan calls the record for a single sports car model.
  • Why isn’t the R35 GT-R among the cars that changed Nissan? The R35 of 2007 is one of the most famous Nissans, but the GT-R’s performance identity began with the Skyline 2000GT-R of 1969, so Otto includes the R35 among the iconic Nissans instead.
  • Did Nissan build electric cars before the LEAF? Yes. Its family tree starts with the Tama electric car of 1947, built by Tokyo Electro Automobile, the company that later became Prince Motors and merged with Nissan; Nissan counts it as its first electric car.
  • When did the Patrol reach the Gulf? The first Patrol of 1951 was sold only in Japan. Nissan says the Patrol’s roots in the Middle East date to the 1950s, and its own releases give slightly different years for its arrival.

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