After the Datsun 520 Pickup was bestowed with the new and lively 96 hp 1.6 L OHC four, it was dubbed “The Lil’ Hustelr” by Datsun. Prior to that, it had a 67 (gross) hp 1.3 pushrod four, which would have made hauling this ample sized Perris Valley camper a bit of a challenge. But who’s in a hurry?
In a perfect world small pickups would still be available in the USA. Obviously the demand just isn’t there. Or more accurately, such demand as there is, is met by the seemingly immortal compacts already out there.
Hold that thought and keep an eye on Ford.
I guess the Maverick is smallish, but still not truly compact. My (admittedly arbitrary) standards for size would be that it would have to have a single cab and at least a six foot bed available, and be under 190″. To get old and curmudgeonly on it, I can’t understand the super short bed’s usefulness, and not everyone needs, or wants, to carry passengers. I will shuffle off to my AARP Bingo cruise now.
Jon, I am with you. You perfectly described my thoughts on the state of “compact” pickups. If it helps, I am less than fifty years old, so I can’t even apply for AARP yet.
I also don’t quite make AARP cut at 47, but look the part with my all grey hair in my “old man special” ’92 Nissan D21.
That thing would be lucky to be able to make the minimum 45 MPH on the expressways! Leave your 4-way flashers on to prevent getting rear ended!
The old Ford Ranger was pretty much what a modern compact truck would be now, and it sold about 70K per year before the real estate meltdown. That’s about the scope of the market for new compact trucks, which is the source of 100 percent of the good used compact trucks that all of the other compact truck enthusiasts say they would buy if they could.
Note that any potential compact truck seller probably already has other truck products on the lot, and that the number 1 source of conquest sales for their new compact trucks probably would be other products in their own line, because that’s how vehicle sales work.
Hauling a camper that long seems a little bit premature, since Datsun pickups wouldn’t have a longer bed option until 1975ish.
I still think there is a market for these, but maybe the profit isn’t there. I just read a book on California look VW’s, and one of the protagonists came back from his all expenses paid tour of Vietnam and bought a Datsun pickup and then a new VW with got all the EMPI goodies. Not your typical guy coming back and buying a muscle car and getting killed in that rather than the war.
Back when these were new, I worked for a BMW & Datsun dealership. A customer had a new ‘Lil Hustler, and I obtained a set of factory window stickers for her, a large “DATSUN” for the upper center of the windshield, and a smaller sticker that is a caricature of the truck raising a big stream of dust as it accelerates. This sticker was to be put in the left rear portion of the rear window. Dealerships were advised to put these on the truck if it was displayed in the showroom or other prominent location.
She never came back to the dealership, so I saved them. I recently found the decals, and if you are the owner of a ‘Lil Hustler, and would like to add these to your truck, let me know. My email address is both parts of my name with no space between, {at} aol.com
On windy days this rig must have been a handful.
Growing up on the east side of the Sierra Nevada in California, these exact rigs (Datsun pickup, Perris Valley camper) were everywhere.
Same here in Oregon too.
They were here in droves in the Mid-Atlantic area as well, but due to the dreaded tinworm attacking the bodies, especially the areas with hidden dirt traps, probably 90% were gone from the roads within 10 years. I’ve seen these with so much rust that the entire bed fell off the vehicle while the truck was driving down the road!
They were still in great mechanical shape, but were structurally unsafe.
I got hauled to the hospital after a dirt bike accident in a red one, and all 67 horses were pulling for all they had !
Covered in thorns, great patches of skin gone, and a jaw-full of Ojai dirt were but mere ‘flesh wounds’ (think the Monty Python skit). The ride to Santa Paula’s Hospital was fraught with peril as the little Datsun made it’s way bumping and grinding what of me wasn’t bleeding, off the canyon floor and to safety.
My riding buddy’s brother had made a good choice in buying that cool old truck, and the camper provided shade for my younger bag of bones on the trip to see the doc. I never looked askance at this era truck again, even tho I never personally owned one in memoriam. (Super Dutys and PowerWagons are my choice today putting forth their 350-400 hp…… and with today’s technology achieving about the same mileage as that 67 hp saddled with Perris Valley habitat)
I just saw a Datsun 1600 pickup at Safeway yesterday. They are almost as tiny as kei trucks and the one I saw was parked next to a current generation Toyota Tundra crew cab. The Toyota’s cab was almost as long as the whole Datsun.
In our present-day litigious nanny-world, that truck camper would be deemed too dangerously large for my 2017 F-150.
There were quite a few Datsun pickups in my circle of friends and family, and I owned a few of them myself. Most of theirs and all of mine were in the later 620 series that ran from 1973-79. There was very little that these small trucks could not do, albeit sometimes at a lower speed than the big guys. My first was a 1973 that had the snappy L16 and a 4 speed gearbox with a lever that would flop about 8 inches from side to side while in gear (common problem on these). Next was a 1974 with the 105hp (gross) L18, which was the one I put close to 100k miles on in my high school years… its decent fuel economy helped facilitate my almost non-stop driving. I later had a couple of 1978 models that benefitted greatly from front disc brakes and a five speed gearbox, a slightly taller rear end, as well as a slight bump in power from the bigger L20B engine. Fortunately, they didn’t salt the roads in Montana when I had mine, so the rust only came quicker than expected, but not at an alarming rate.
I’ll always remember these as being zippy, decent handling, and fun to drive… their weaknesses only became apparent when heavily loaded, yet they were geared low enough to almost always be able to churn along at *some* rate of speed, even if it pissed off everyone behind you. The ones with four wheel drum brakes were terrifyingly poor at scrubbing off speed, and the way that the front brakes were set up made it doubly hard to stop in reverse.
I’ll guess that the little 1300 would happily cruise along at 60mph on the level with that camper, though it might take 90 seconds of flogging to get there.
My Grand-dad had that exact truck, minus the camper. Solidly built and very reliable.