As few days ago, in Bangkok, I saw a squarish maroon shape with chrome bumpers out of the corner of my eye turning into a small “moo” (Thai for alleyway) a couple blocks ahead and decided to go investigate. The driver was out of the car by the time I got there, opening the gate of his house. This was a nicely preserved Japanese car, but I was not overly familiar with the model.
Nissan Datsun 1600? Hmmm… That didn’t ring any bells. The double badge made this a transition model, I figured. The famously incomprehensible transformation of Datsun into Nissan, which was officially launched in 1981, took several years to be achieved (and about US$500m, according to some estimates), but that was mostly in Europe and North America. Nissan was a household name in Japan since the ‘50s. What about grey areas such as Southeast Asia? Well, here’s your answer: the transition from Datsun to Nissan was already taking place by the late ‘70s.
The proud owner said the car was “25 years old” – perhaps he meant 35, more likely 38…
According to what info I could gather from the web, all Datsun A10 sedans received square headlamps by mid-1979 (except wagons) in all markets. It’s very probable that this particular car was built in Japan for export, though these were also made (as Datsuns) in Australia, Mexico and South Africa. Eagle-eyed American and Canadian CC readers will have recognized this as the second generation 510, as it was marketed as such in North America, albeit with pouty 5mph lips. The slim chrome bumpers and round lamps on this Thai car are more attractive in my opinion, though the blacked out grille is a puzzler. Designer Toshio Yamashita did a good job of toning down the previous generation’s cartoonish pseudo-American Coke-bottle styling for this cleaner, if slightly bland shape.
JDM Nissan A10 sedans: Violet and Auster (above); Stanza and Stanza Maxima GT (below).
But why, Oh why did Nissan double-badge this car? And why did it give it yet another nameplate? “Nissan Datsun 1600” – how does that make any sense? This rather plain-looking, three-box RWD car, which reminded me of the Fiat 131, was marketed under so many names: Nissan/Datsun Violet, Stanza, 1600J / 1800J, 140J / 160J, Sedán, 510, Auster… It’s easier to give it its internal alphanumeric A10, though one must be careful not to confuse the Nissan A10 car with the Nissan A10 engine (which was a 1 litre used in the late ‘60s on the Datsun 1000). On the Japanese domestic market, the A10s were available from mid-1977 as the base Violet, the “sporty” Auster, the “luxury” Stanza and the “sport & luxury” Stanza Maxima GT – yes, this was the first use of the Maxima name, though these were never seen outside Japan and the name became associated with a different platform (derived from the 910 Bluebird) from 1981.
JDM Violet wagon and Stanza Resort (above); US-spec 510 2-door sedan and coupé (below).
The A10 was available as a two- and four-door sedan, a wagon, hatchback hardtop coupé and, from 1980, as a five-door hatchback. Some could be ordered as Stanzas or Austers, but all were available as Violets in Japan. The weird thing is that none of these are exactly like the one I photographed in Bangkok. A special Southeast Asian poverty-spec version, maybe? Engine choices on this car were also pretty confusing. Anything from 1.4 to 1.6, 1.8 and 2.0 litre was available, depending on where it was marketed.
The Mexican version was long-lived, being built until 1984 – the five-door sedan was called the Datsun Samurai, which is a little on the nose (not that Suzuki ever cared). The Yue Loong 712 (above), built in Taiwan, apparently lasted until 1986. Everywhere else, the A10 / A11 had been replaced by its FWD successor. So this is somewhat representative of the end of an era, the last RWD chrome-bumper mid-range Datsuns.
Many other automakers had confusing model names. General Motors, British Leyland or Peugeot-Citroën-Talbot (to name but three) were also guilty of these “sins” around the same time as this Nissan/Datsun was made. But Nissan took the practice to an even more intricate and obscure level, particularly with this model. So congrats, Nissan, for making out of this pretty innocuous car the most mind-numbingly unclear nameplate salad I’ve ever come across. Next time I catch a glimpse of a chrome bumper in Thailand, I’ll remember to buy aspirin before I leave the country.
Related posts:
Vintage Reviews: 1978 Datsun 510 – Right Number, Wrong Car: Japanese Edition, by GN
Curbside Classic: 1979 Datsun 510 – Revived In Name If Not In Spirit, by David Saunders
My guess? The “Datsun 1600” nameplate appears to be one piece. Was it a cost decision to slap an already existing “Nissan” badge next to it during the transition from Datsun to Nissan? That would probably have been cheaper than designing a new badge or changing the tooling to lop the “Datsun” from the “1600”. So my answer to today’s Final Jeopardy question, Alex, is “What is manufacturing efficiency?”
And oh yeah, I really like this car.
A good friend had an ’82 Datsun (can’t remember the model after all these years) and I recall it had both a Datsun and a Nissan badge on the rear.
An appropriate reference using an underappreciated Beatles song. Nice work!
+1
What song?
If you go to Wikipedia, they call this the 2nd generation A10. The 1st generation of the A10 was called 710, and aside from “the oily bits” I’m not sure it was that closely related to the late 60s-early 70s Bluebird/510.
Perhaps you might call it the 2nd iteration of the 510 name?
BTW, the NISSAN badge seems to be either newer, or made of a better grade of metal than the Datsun1600 badge.
Okay, let loose the criticism of my post.
Right, I had the predecessor of this car, a 1974 Datsun 710 4 door sedan while I was in school. Mine had an automatic, it was a 1.8 liter engine.
I drove one of these 510’s for my job while in school, I worked as a transporter for Hertz, at the time they mostly had Ford models, but we did have an occasional Toyota or Datsun. I think they had a NAPS-Z engine on these (which my 710 didn’t have)…and also they offered a hatchback model, which is what I would have preferred to my 4 door sedan 710. I enjoyed driving the 510, even though it was not as highly regarded as the original 510.
” the NISSAN badge seems to be either newer, or made of a better grade of metal than the Datsun1600 badge. ”
I know, right? Makes this rebadging effort look so half-arsed it boggles the mind. At least, when they started doing this in the US (from 1983, IIRC), they made new “Datsun by Nissan” emblems.
I think many Japanese companies used westernized trade names, because of the lingering stigma of Japan being on the ‘bad’ side during the war, and also that Japanese products were once considered cheap and shoddy.
In the US, Sanyo sold their products as ‘Craig’ and ‘Pioneer’, Harakawa sold theirs as ‘Sharp’, and Akai was sold here as ‘Roberts’. Though, to me ‘Datsun’ doesn’t sound that much more western than ‘Nissan’.
Sometimes, a foreign company would have to re-brand for the country it exported to for trademark reasons. Matsushita sold it’s products world-wide as ‘National’, but used ‘Panasonic’ in North America, as there was already an American electronics company called ‘National’ that made shortwave radios. I think the American ‘Philips-66’ oil company was why Philips of Holland sold their products here as ‘Norelco’.
As for ‘Datsun’ – maybe it was initially used in the US because ‘Nissan’ sounded too much like ‘Nippon’.
I guess Nissan wanted their real name back after the stigma wore off!
Happy Motoring, Mark
The legend is that the Datsun trade name was used in Nissan’s first export markets (notably Australia and the US) in case the product flopped.
And yet, the early sixties 30-series Cedric was always badged as Nissan Cedric in Australia – not that you ever saw many of them. I don’t recall the badging on the 310-series Bluebird, but when the Pininfarina-styled 410 Bluebird came on sale, it was a Datsun.
Strange that they should change the name around ’65, then change it back a decade and a half later.
Datsun is hardly a “western” name. The official story from Nissan’s website is the following:
The company that created the DAT (or DAT Motor Vehicle), which is where the name “Datsun” came from, was Kwaishinsha Jidosha Kojo, founded in 1911 by M. Hashimoto. His dream was to make cars that were suited to Japan and, if possible, export them. In 1914, when he completed work on a small 2-cylinder 10-horsepower car, he borrowed the initial letters of the surnames of his three investors (K. Den, R. Aoyama, and M. Takeuchi) and gave the name “DAT” to his new car.
Later Kwaishinsha merged with the Jitsuyo Jidosha Co., Ltd. to form the Dat Jidosha Seizo Co. It went on to produce military vehicles, but in 1931 the company developed a new passenger car (500cc, 10ps), which embodied the DAT spirit. It was, however, more compact than the original DAT, so it was called DATSON – in the sense of “Son of DAT”. In Japanese, though, son is the word for “loss” so instead it was changed to “SUN”, which has brighter associations, when the car went on sale in March 1932.
The name “Nissan” came later:
In 1928, Yoshisuke Aikawa founded the holding company Nihon Sangyo (日本産業 Japan Industries or Nihon Industries). The name ‘Nissan’ originated during the 1930s as an abbreviation used on the Tokyo Stock Exchange for Nihon Sangyo.
Nissan bought DAT and eventually replaced the moniker in Japan by the late ’30s, but not in foreign markets.
Some Nissan models, notably the Bluebird, were badged as Datsuns in Japan into the late ’70s. It paralleled the phase-out of the Toyopet badge at Toyota, although Toyopet wasn’t a separate company that Toyota acquired, just a brand name the company added (suggested by a contest) in the late ’40s.
Damn I love Datsuns from the 70’s.
We used to get these as DATSUN 180K in only sedan&wagons.still planty on the road after four decades.that 1800 cc engine is tough as nails.
The naming scheme of the A10’s isn’t too crazy when you realize the rationalization.
Japan got the Violet, Auster, and Stanza; each were sold at seperate dealer networks.
Europe almost exclusively used the numerical+J designation.
In the US, ours was called 510 (and it was not a direct desecdant of the first 510’s we received; those are based on the JDM Bluebird series).
I do like these, and for Nissan they racked up tons of WRC rally victories, but they were somewhat retrograde compared to their 710 predecessors. I feel these were the beginning of Nissan really trying to become a bigger global player; very conservative in styling and simplified mechanicals to appeal to a broader global audience.
In Australia it was the Stanza, the one car in their range that didn’t get an alphanumeric designation. Oriental inscrutability?
Rather! And you’d think after the name Cedric had caused such hilarity here in 60’s Aus that they’d have gone for something a little less, well, highbrow. “Cedric is now composing a Stanza”…
cjiguy, if you only look at three markets, it looks OK, but if you look at more, the model name is almost always changing.
Mexico: Datsun Sedán
Thailand: Nissan Datsun 1600
South Africa: Datsun 1600J
US/Canada: Datsun 510
Japan: Nissan Violet/Auster/Stanza
Europe: Datsun 160J (or 160J Violet)
Taiwan: Yue Loong 712
That’s a lot of different names for the same car. By comparison, the Toyota Corolla was known in all of the above as the Toyota Corolla.
They should have consolidated and called it the NissanDatsun Indecisive.
These things had a fairly successful rally career in NZ, I remember them as a Datsun Stanza there were a few around in OZ in the early 80s but they vanished soon after, havent seen one in NZ since Ive been back early Jappas are quite rare here our six monthly inspections dealt to them removing them from service usually for rust.
Can’t believe the lack of rust – for one of those!
Oooh, my exceptionally lovely (and very sweet) year 10 art teacher had one of these, and the contrast between the entirely forgettable square lines of her Stanza and her still-vivid non-squareness in it raised that car no end for me. (Actually, being teenaged, the sight Ms S raised everything except my marks – the distraction! – but enough). In reality, these distinctly non-poetic and over-named Nissan Datsun Stanzas were backward-looking, leaf-sprung, gutless, ill-steering, noisy horrors with only one virtue; total mechanical indestructability. I wonder if anyone else has had a bland or even horrid car raised well above its’ station by the association with a glamorous owner?
Some of the oddities of this particular car can probably be attributed to minor modifications over the last 30-odd years. The paint is too shiny to be original. The grille was likely blacked out at the same time. The wheel covers obviously aren’t stock and that side-view mirror doesn’t look quite right either. The bumper rub strips were removed. Windows were tinted. Side trim was deleted. Who knows what else? Maybe the “Nisssan” badge was even added later, though likely not.
I had 2 co-workers with late 1970’s 510s. The leading edge of the hood rusted out on his wagon, One girl had the notch back coupe, She tried changing a flat herself, one day after work. All he later told me, was the she tried putting the spare on backwards. Propably something you wanted to keep close to your co-workers. It wasn’t a bad Corona fighter.
An attractive color. Clean, simple, functional styling. Big windows one can see out of without TV cameras. Compared to today’s grotesque automotive creations, I’ll take one of these any day, even with the extra badges.
Happy Motoring, Mark
My father had a 78 or 79 510 – automatic – manual steering and brakes.
He bought it after being a Ford guy for his whole life but becoming fed up with their lack of reliability. He traded a Fairmont in for it.
I learned to drive on that car and took my driver’s test with it.
It ran great for a long time – but rusted horribly.
And just to confuse the issue even more, Nissan Motor Company’s two-seater of the late 1960’s was called the Datsun 1600, at least in the US.