Whaddaya mean, “Facile brainfart of a throwaway title?” My first effort was “Two, Four, Six, Eight, Here’s Our Favourite Ungulate,” so it could have been worse. But when I first laid eyes on this hot little hatchback, far from thinking about horned quadrupeds, I thought about Corollas. “Hey, what’s wrong with that Trueno?” is what popped into my stupid head. Seeing AE86s all the damn time conditioned me to confuse this Nissan Gazelle (a.k.a Silvia or 200SX) for yet another Toyota, initially. A cardinal sin.
In my defense, the Nissan S12, already quite uncommon in its day, has pretty much completely disappeared now, so my eyes are out of practice. Still, between this and a Sprinter Trueno, I’m thinking the Nissan side of things might be more fun. This Gazelle is certainly a completely different animal from the one that Nissan sent over to Australia (see William Stopford’s excellent post for more info on those) and the 200SX shipped over to the States. The Ozzie cars had a live axle and could only be had with the Bluebird’s uninspiring 100hp 2-litre. By contrast, US cars had the same IRS as the JDM cars and eventually could be ordered with a 160hp 3-litre V6.
On the JDM, these high-trim early S12s were given this humpy hood to make room for the DOHC 2-litre within. And this one also has a turbo, which means 190hp. That’s got to make it one tough Gazelle to catch. Some European countries also got the FJ20 engine in their S12s, but only Japan got theirs turbocharged. Lower-spec cars, as we can see in the brochure excerpt above, were available with various iterations of the 1.8 CA (including turbocharged versions) and the 2-litre FJ.
I was never very keen on the alphanumeric soup that Nissan served to accompany their RWD coupés in most foreign markets in those days, but then Fairlady, Silvia and Gazelle were particularly effeminate monikers, so there is some logic. The Gazelle name, which was intended for use in certain Nissan dealerships that did not carry the Silvia, only lasted a couple of generations.
In Japan, the Gazelle name didn’t even make it past the S12’s mid-life facelift in early 1986. Interestingly, the only Japanese carmaker at the time that named a model after one of the gazelle’s predators was Nissan with their Leopard. The S12 Gazelles only escaped premature extinction by staying on the Australian market until the S13 took over in late 1988.
Apparently, the Gazelle was supposed to be the luxury variant to the Silvia’s sportier one. That’s probably why these little antennae are up on the roof there. What are these for though? I’ve seen them on a few JDM cars of this era, but I’m still not clear what they do. Answers in the CComments, pretty please!
Inside, the luxury is evident for all to see. If you can call it that. The checkered print bucket seats and door cards really tie the cabin together. The CD collection just seals the deal: me want! It’s a wonder why Nissan only shifted 30,000 of those S12s in Japan in four and a half years – that’s about one tenth of the Skyline sales. Sure, the Skyline existed in more variants, but it was also more expensive. And loads more popular, both then and now.
It’s a pity, because the S12 Gazelle pioneered two pretty cool technological whizz-bang toys to entice novelty-obsessed Japanese customers into signing the dotted line. One was an early form of keyless entry — rather impressive for a Nissan of the period.
The second one, which unfortunately I cannot show this on today’s car though it should have it, is “The world’s first fully retractable headlamp with a wiper.” That’s right, those flip-up lights have a wiper attached. Duly noted, but the question then becomes: if this was the first car with than enviable and necessary feature, what (if any) was the second car with retractable lights-plus-wipers? Over to Mr Stern for that QOTD. And over and out from me on this Nissan Gazelle. Interesting car in many ways, marred by rather boring styling.
Related posts:
Curbside Capsule: 1984-86 Nissan Gazelle 2.0 SGL Coupe – Entering The Lion’s Den, by William Stopford
Curbside Classic: 1984 Nissan 200SX Turbo – Unused, Unloved, Unlocked, by Perry Shoar
Cohort Sighting: Nissan 200SX – An S12 Gets Some Much Needed Love, by Perry Shoar
Those antennas? I believe, but am not entirely sure, that those are antennas for an aftermarket TV. They are quite common in Japan.
Below is a picture of my brother-in-law watching TV while driving during my last visit to Japan a few years ago.
The Gazelle is HORIZONTAL styling to the extreme… OK looking… except for the added on later by a teen driver looking hood scoop…
A buddy had a US market version. It was the first car I saw (heard) with the talking reminders (” your door is ajar”). (No it’s not, it’s a door!)
IIRC the system actually used analog records, basically tiny vinyl disks?.
you are correct. My 86 Maxima had the same system. At some point they switched to a recording but I am not sure when.I am thinking the first ones that had the chime were the disks and the later that used a tone were the recorded ones. I thought it was so cool at the time but a passing fad, gone by I think 87 or 88.
The earliest ones were in a Datsun/Nissan 810 Maxima and had only a single voice warning (“please turn off the lights”); it was replaced after one year with an upgraded version with several alerts that used a 3-inch analog record with concentric grooves for about six different warnings. Still later, solid-state digital recordings embedded into microchips replaced the tiny phonograph.
I’m still surprised they used a phonograph/gramophone rather than a tape loop player in the analog setup, which would seem easier to adapt to automotive use since skipping grooves isn’t a problem with tape. Tape loops of this sort were used to generate sound effects in 1970s electro-mechanical arcade games.
Interestingly, some recent Hondas have voice warnings for things like the seatbelt and parking brake.
I rather like the styling of these, back in the day I might have picked the Celica GT-S over it but I would have gone 200SX (in hatchback form) for sure over the GT or ST. Very common in SoCal at my high school and beyond, mostly NA, a couple of turbos and someone got the V6 towards the end. I haven’t seen one in a very long time though…
It took me a few views to “get” the title 🙂 Clever, Mr.T, very clever…
I’m with Jim on this – a nice looking car and a great pun (in a second language as well).
Nice piece, though I’ll pass on the in-car TV
I didn’t get the pun until i remembered aunt can be pronounced “ant” rather than “ont”…
Same.
Loving the punny title, Mr. T!
Nice cars. Really liked them back in the day. Thanks for writing this up.
In car tv. How about in truck tv.
I remember being in traffic on the expressway in Tokyo to glance over at the driver of the cement truck next to us to see that he wasn’t watching the baseball on his in cabin tv. I doubt he switched it off once the traffic was moving.
At the time I never thought these were a particularly attractive design. Square with rounded corners, but somehow a bit out of step. And that hood lump really does it no visual favours, whatever might be underneath.
Still built a model of the coupe version though.
My dear departed youngest sister bought a used ’85 200SX after her hand-me-down disaster 1984 Pontiac Sunbird threw a rod in it’s 2nd replacement engine in about 80k miles…about 1989 (hers was a non-gazelle model). She replaced it with a 1993 240SX, and my other sister likewise bought a ’95 240SX which was later totalled and she bought her ’97 240SX….so 4 of these total between my 2 youngest sisters, all of them automatic, and all of them notchbacks. My middle sister still owns her ’97 (bought new).
I had looked at the hatchback version of the 200SX back in ’86 when I eventually settled on my GTi. It seems I looked at lots of different cars that year; even different types (hatchbacks, sedans, even 2 seaters like the Bertone and MR2….didn’t seem to know even what type of car I wanted to buy, much less which model or brand, I’ve since never spent so much effort perusing the offerings as I did that year…..but since then, when I settled on my GTi, I’ve really stuck to my choice, having owned only VW Golf hatchbacks, only with manual, though I did go from 2 door to 4 door when I bought my current car.
Not sure why I didn’t choose the 200SX back then, it is so long ago I don’t recall the details, though I remember the place I shopped for it though it hasn’t been a dealership since about 2 years after that. I really liked my sister’s 200SX, I even bought the service manual for it, and fixed some small things (vacuum leaks, also headlight switch wiring to save her from having to buy new OEM expensive switch while still in College). Alas, she didn’t have it long as it was totalled in a hailstorm (we live in central Texas, and these seem to happen every spring, in fact there’s even a specific day that hail seems most common here….park your car in garage that day for sure!) . It had a neat early form of built-in diagnostics where it flashed some lights on the dash to tell you what was wrong, which was good since the car had a fair amount of gizmos for its day. Maybe that’s why I didn’t buy it; I also rejected buying an ’86 Accord Hatch that year since I wanted fuel injection, but they only sold it on models with power locks/windows, which I was really set on avoiding, but VW back then still had individual options not just packages, so you could get closer to what you wanted. Still, would have been nice to have a 200SX, though I still think I would have preferred my Scirocco longer term.