I was once told that the Italians export their lesser plonk and keep all the good vino for themselves. I’m starting to think that the Japanese have been doing the same thing with their cars, at least until pretty recently. Nissan were hardly the only ones guilty of this kind of behaviour, but their exports being beyond dull makes it all the more intriguing. What were they hiding?
1987-91 Nissan Bluebird (U12) Saloon – a.k.a Stanza / Pintara
Many of you North American readers will know of the Nissan Stanza, a flavourless and colourless FWD four-door that would have been completely forgettable had it not been so competently engineered and put together. Those of the Antipodean persuasion may know it as the Pintara. Paul wrote all that needed to be written about the last Stanza, describing it as “the kind of car you have to make a concerted effort to notice, given its exceptionally generic styling straight out of an insurance company ad of the times.”
1987-91 Nissan Bluebird (U12) SSS Atessa Hardtop
And when we’re talking about the standard pillared saloon – the one they exported far and wide, it’s totally true. But they also made a hardtop sedan, which they slyly kept from the rest of the world. And we’re not talking about some cut-down top with discreet pillars and frameless doors here. This is a genuine hardtop. The seat belts are hanging from the roof. Evidently, that’s one reason why these could never be exported to North America, but did that necessarily mean the rest of the world had to be deprived of its presence as well?
It’s a slight exaggeration, to be fair. Some Southeast Asian markets (e.g. Hong Kong, Singapore and probably Thailand) did get both variants. But did they also get the high-performance 175hp Twin Cam Turbo SSS Attesa Limited with the STC-Sus “Super Toe Control Suspension” (I am not making this up) and all the trimmings? Methinks not.
Our feature car is not a sssuper sssexy SSS, unfortunately. It does seem to have the 2-litre SR20D at least, so it’s not a complete loss. The U12 Bluebird was launched in Japan in September 1987 and got a minor facelift in October 1989 before being nixed in August 1991. Our example is a later car, with the revised taillights. The original ones were less fussy, but this is still ok and miles better than the anonymous arse of the Stanza/Pintara.
Inside, it’s a wild world of (faded) red and earth tones. Nothing dates a car like a coloured interior. Things went all black and gray by the mid-‘90s (except in Cadillacs and a few other outliers), so this generation of Bluebirds is a good representation of the way interiors were when carmakers had a bit more daring. As an aside, another bonus is that those horrible automatic seat belts seen on US market cars are absent here. I remember seeing those for the first time when we moved to the US in the summer of 1987. During our first few weeks there, my father rented a Toyota Camry that has those things – it seemed to me like the worst idea in the world. Still can’t abide the bloody things today.
If you tally up the models that just never made it across the Pacific (e.g. Skyline, Laurel, President, Gloria, etc.) and the ones that did but only in their least exciting variant, it’s no wonder that a number of American and European enthusiasts never thought of Nissan (or Toyota) as anything but bland generic cars for the longest time.
This eventually started to change, but for most people, aside from the Datsun Z coupé, the name “Nissan” was synonymous with “dull.” I’ll readily admit that used to think that way too, but I was plainly ignorant. In my defence, some of those Nissans were really aggressively boring, but still, mea culpa.
I now realize that Nissans, even of the family-oriented FWD kind, could always morph into something worth looking at (and posting about). It’s just that virtually all the really interesting ones were jealously guarded by Japanese enthusiasts when new, and not many have escaped their grasp since. Case in point: the invisible Stanza can turn into a remarkably handsome four-door – it’s just called Bluebird U12 Hardtop.
Related posts:
CC Capsule: 1989-1992 Nissan Stanza (Bluebird U12): The Shrinking Violet, by PN
Curbside Classic: 1989-92 Ford Corsair/Nissan Pintara – A Lame Duck Bluebird, by William Stopford
I had two Stanzas when I was younger – I for some reason as an adolescent child was very smitten by the design which was (to me) very close to the ‘89-‘92 Cressida, another of my favorite cars. I finally bought one when I was 17 and 19 although they were well-used at that point. I had great fun capitalizing on the car’s anonymity by rebadging it as an Infiniti and was never questioned, to be fair it looked quite a natural fit between the M30 and original G20.
Those motorised seatbelts were at least as terrible an idea as you think. They are significantly worse at their job than manual belts. My second-ever foray into the traffic safety realm was in high school; I wrote about them for a CP Writing “public issue” research-and-report assignment. I still remember the money quote I dug up from someone at NHTSA: “We decided we were willing to degrade the protection, possibly degrade the protection, to get more people using belts”.
(the first foray: writing to the school district’s motor pool when I was 8 or 9 to bitch about the faded stop sign on the side of my school bus. I gave my handwritten letter to the bus driver and asked him to give it in. I guess he did; the bus had a new stop sign a week later)
Why were the motorized belts less safe? Is it because people often neglected to fasten the lap belt? In the few cars I’ve been in that had them, it seemed the auto-shoulder belt fit me the same way as a manual one.
Widespread failure to use the lap belt was a major reason, yes, but there were others as well. It’s been a long time since I stood in front of the class and Ms. Oviatt and gave my little speech about seatbelts, but I think I remember that the other main reason was sub-optimal placement of the upper anchor point. This stands to reason in light of Canada’s rejection of most (all?) of the motorised and many of the door-mounted belt systems—Canada’s belt usage rates attained civilised levels long before the US grudgingly grew up about it, and so there was no incentive for the relevant Canada Motor Vehicle Safety Standards to be weakened in an effort to save the stupid and their victims (belted people tend to remain conscious and in position to prevent or mitigate second and subsequent collisions; unbelted people don’t).
Another reason: people who hated the motorised belts simply cut them.
Youve just described why there was a boom in used ex JDM cars here a friend of mine had exactly this car a pillarless Bluebird it was lovely she reckoned until it spun out on a wet bend in the road and hit a bank, turned out it was on snow tyres and nobody had noticed the dealer replaced it with another at no charge but yes these upscale jappas were and are very popular here, Pintaras didnt really appear on the Kiwi market that junk simply could not compete with genuine Nissans new or used from Japan, it was an Australian market oddity only like all the other shared model cars a sort of comedy on wheels and an early nail in the coffin of the Aussie car industry, a sign the federal government was tired of propping it up.
It reminds me a lot of the Mitsubishi Diamanté of the same era. Which is good, as the Stanza over here was almost painfully boringly styled. Nissan did play it very safe as to what got let loose, but still enjoyed a good reputation.
Red and other colored leathers are certainly making a comeback but as far as cloth goes, nothing but black, gray, and tan anymore.
This car is attractive to me in the same way the first gen Maxima “4DSC” was. It doesn’t look the same, but pushes the same right buttons for me.
“Those of the Antipodean persuasion may know it as the Pintara” Here in NZ we got them as the Bluebird. In CKD for early ones, and Australian assembled for later. And also…..
“Some Southeast Asian markets (e.g. Hong Kong, Singapore and probably Thailand) did get both variants. But did they also get the high-performance 175hp Twin Cam Turbo SSS Attesa Limited with the STC-Sus “Super Toe Control Suspension” (I am not making this up) and all the trimmings? Methinks not.”
We got the SSS Attessa here too, in limited numbers. It was JDM spec, and very limited numbers, like a couple of dozen or so. Early CA18DET ones. I’m not entirely sure if they were the sedan or hardtop, but I have a feeling they were hardtops.
Of course then we also got loads, and loads, and loads of JDM ones as used imports through the 1990’s. Every spec and grade imaginable, from the dreary CA16S through to the SR20DET facelift. A few LD20 diesels too. 2WD, 4WD, both body styles, etc. Probably the most common combo here as used imports though would have been a 2wd auto 1800 hartop.
Hmm. Interesting.
Hasegawa in Japan recently introduced a model of this series Bluebird, and some of the Japanese guys I know got really excited about it. Now I sort of understand why. The versions we got as the Pintara here were ultra-boring, a mere entry in a market segment for dyed-in-the-wool Nissan buyers.
Nissan didn’t keep the U12 hardtop from everyone! As Styles notes above, Nissan offered the SSS Attesa turbo hardtop new in New Zealand in 1988/89/90. The one below was new here on 06 March 1990. They were around NZ$58,000 when new, and targeted at the Ford Sierra XR4x4 which was a similar price. I suspect the Attesa made the Sierra look a little old and unrefined (and I say that as a Sierra 4×4 owner!)
When I was at University in 1994, one of my flatmates bought a 1988 SSS-X U12 hardtop, which I rode in a number of times. It was a nice car for the time, went well and comfy, and the pillarless design gave such a lovely airy feeling.
Another NZ market offering I didn’t know about! It’s almost like another world across the water from us…