Imagine you’ve stepped back thirty years and landed in Japan, with a few million yen burning a hole in your (huge) pocket. In the market for a big four-door? The choice is abundant. And I see remnants of these times all over Tokyo – large Toyotas, Mitsubishis, Volvos, Audis, and so on. Even the odd Cadillac or Citroën XM. But what I very rarely see are W140s, the immortal Mercedes S-Class. There are a few, but older S-Class and younger ones are far more common, by comparison. And looking at this Cedric, I’m beginning to understand why.
Big luxury saloons are, by their very essence, expensive. But even plushness comes in levels and you cannot expect a Bentley, a BMW and a Buick to cost the same. I’m not sure where Nissan is these days (a pretty bad place, I’m told), but in the ‘90s, they were trying to compete with their JDM peers, like Toyota, Mazda and Honda, as well as a myriad of international players, in the high-end saloon department and doing a very decent job at it.
This Y33 Cedric is the absolute top of the line, with so many gadgets it almost qualifies as a President – the actual top of the line and true S-Class rival, but unattainable to mere mortals – in slightly reduced form. What it actually is, in its bones, is the penultimate generation of the Cedric / Gloria nameplate, the Gloria being a legacy badge from the old Prince range and Cedric being Nissan’s answer to the Toyota Crown since 1960. Since 1971, both cars became 99% identical, but the names carried on due to being sold by different dealership networks.
By the ‘80s, the Cedric / Gloria twins were starting to evolve in complexity. Independent rear suspension was introduced and manual transmissions disappeared, as did 4-cyl. engines. Nissan continued using a straight-6 for the Skyline, but developed a completely new V6 engine family, the VG motor, for the Cedric and many other higher-end cars. Our feature car, created at a time when hitherto strict size restrictions on both car bodies and engine displacement were loosened, has a 3-litre V6 of the new VQ generation, which debuted with this generation Cedric in 1995.
As the Brougham VIP version, this Cedric was intended for chauffeur service, as opposed to its sportier owner-driver-oriented stablemate, the Gran Turismo (above). Those were the two main flavours of Y33 Cedric on offer: there were about a dozen trim variants available for the Brougham and Gran Turismo, but those two were the main categories. The VIP was obviously the Brougham’s fanciest trim.
Yet it cost about ¥5m, even when equipped with air suspension and as many extras as one could possibly want (except leather, we’re in Japan, it’s just not done). The cheapest W140, with the 3.2 litre 6-cyl. engine, was over ¥3m more. That doesn’t scream “cosutu-pefomansu” (cost-performance), as the not-very-Japanese phrase goes.
Our Cedric, to be fair, was a bit smaller than Daimler-Benz’s flagship. The W140 sat on a 304cm wheelbase, was 512cm long, 188cm wide and 149cm high. The Y33 Cedric sat on a 280cm wheelbase, was 486cm long, 177cm wide and 142cm high. In terms of presence, though, it made up for it by sporting a sleeker body, hidden B-pillars for that oh-so-JDM hardtop look and a commendable restraint in the amount of chrome trim and lower body cladding that would have perhaps served the W140 just as well.
Why am I picking on the Benz? No reason, really. I’m not really a fan, unlike the W126, so that might play a part. But I could say the same about the BMW 7-Series or the Audi A8. They were just too big and expensive to make much of a splash, here. But it wasn’t just that, as Jaguars sold pretty well; XJ40s are still plentiful here. But again, the Cedric (and Toyota with their Crown and other high-end models, like the Windom) had played catch-up so hard that they had S-Class quality for about half the price. Unless you were Jaguar and could offer something extremely chic and typically British, the domestic carmakers’ offerings were all but irresistible. Let’s take a closer look.
There is no point on putting the Jag, the Audi A8 or the W140 in this table – they were in a different league, cost-wise. Even the cheapest 6-cyl. Benz E-Class, which was closer to the Cadric size-wise, was a lot dearer than almost everything else. But they sold well in Japan, compared to the S-Class. And I’m not saying all the cars in this table were successful here, far from it. Only the French saw the point in the Renault Safrane, Honda didn’t sell that many Legends here, nor have I ever seen an Opel Omega. But in such a crowded segment, Japan’s domestic carmakers’ products offered certain aspects, such as “hardtop” styling and the latest electronic bells and whistles, that made for a compelling argument, all things being equal.
And as that table hopefully shows, everything else sort of was pretty much equal: every car but one had independent suspension all round, a big 3-litre-ish engine with OHC, similar amounts of power… The only distinguishing feature that really divides the group is FWD or RWD. Nissan and Toyota were firmly in the RWD faction, the more traditionalist wing of Big JDM Saloons. If nothing else, conservatism sells in this market segment.
Nissan managed to sell almost 145k units of the Y33 Cedric, plus 96k units of the Gloria twin, between June 1995 and June 1999. That was less than the Y32, which was itself in decline compared to the Y31, but it was still a decent market performance, for a larger model that was almost exclusively sold in Japan.
The Y33 Cedric did well enough, but it certainly didn’t prevent Nissan from almost going bust at the tail end of the ‘90s. Would it have made sense outside of Japan, probably under a different name? Well, perhaps. They did try it with its successor, the Y34, which was exported as the Infiniti M45. That didn’t turn out too well, but maybe if they had called it Brougham VIP…
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Looks more like a 3.5 rl from the same time period…
You fool…nope, I mistook it for a KA7 at first, too.
That was kind of their downfall, actually.
Actually, the KA9 Rlegendo was even blanderer. With a stupid name.
Compared to the overstyled excrescences we now must endure, I find these blandboxes stunningly beautiful.
Of course, Nissan’s dalliances with Renault seemed to result in the quality disappearing faster tan the others, so they fell first. Does seem a shame.
A curious car. Very impressive looking, almost imposing, very conservative – ought to have been a smash hit among its target market, you’d think.
What really surprised me was the TatraTable, showing the Nissan to be ¥680,000 more expensive than the equivalent Toyota. That’s quite a sizeable percentage difference. The question came screaming out at me: Just what does this Nissan offer that the Toyota doesn’t?
And further to that – having owned a Diamante (well, an Australian Verada) for 16 years, what do either of those offer that the Diamante doesn’t – for ¥912,000 less? You could say it’s sportier than the Ced Bro, but the you’ve got the whole Ced Gran Turismo stream to paddle in.
And some of the imported ‘competition’ – you’d really have to want the ‘status’ of an imported car, and hope the parts and service supply was up to scratch.
Here’s the Gran Turismo Gloria – bargain-basement Bentley, anyone?
Not many of these left here now. I quite like them, better looking than the Y32, a bit more dignified than the Y34 – although the Y34 was infinitely more interesting from a design detail point of view. A Y31 or Y34 would be my pick of the Cedglos. If my 90s JDM Nissans were anything to go by, the build quality will be excellent and the dashboard, door panels, and velour trim will be indestructible. Fun fact: the 4WD and diesel versions used the RB/RD straight 6 respectively – I never understood the point of selling straight- and V- engined variants of the same car!