So, Japan...

[akku]

May 8, 2023 18:32:16 GMT captainmatt said:

Overjoyed at this entire thread, love learning as much as I can about all sorts of Japanese culture, the background architecture and street furniture is as much interest to me as the cars
What is that awesome boxy wood pannelled wagon outside the Mooneyes shop? Some sort of CROWN Wagon?

My brother lived there 9 years previosuly and has been back another 6 months or so now. Its a fascinating place. Its a country where a guy will be walking down the street, his phone rings, so he pops into a phone box to take the call so as not to disturb people on the street. Everybody* seems genuinely very polite and considerate. It has its downsides. As I say, bro has been doing business in and with Japan business for a couple of decades (he was based in HK for like 12 years as well) and he sometimes rolls his eyes and says "not the Japanese way" but generally I think the plus outweighs the minus.

I believe there are 2 wagons in the Mooneyes photos, one is a Nissan Cedric and one is a Toyota CROWN.

[akku]

Here's a family progression for you.

As I've mentioned a few times Nissan had ongoing relationship with Austin, my understanding is the small prewar cars were based off copies of the Austin 7. What I didn't know until I came to Yama was that they condinued this relationship into the 1950s. Nissan built their own licenced versions of the A40 and A50 saloons.







As Nissan wanted to go its own way they started to adapt the A50 Cambridge into a new car with more Japanese styling and so on. The result was the Prince 1500.



Althuogh the facelift looks more like an Opel to me...



The final version of this platfrom, as far as I understand it from the display card information is this rather unhappy looking thing.

"When you buy your Fiat off wish.com"



All of these are basically the A50 Cambridge, the rear view (I'm sure I have a pic somewhere) shows them still using the Austin Cambridge tail lights and even the profile of the rear wing.

Prince moved on to far far more appealing and well developed cars after this, notably the Gloria which carries over some of the styling from the earlier model with its stacked headlights...



Is anyone else thinking AMC Ambassador / Marlin at this point?



The Gloria transitioned from Prince to Nissan when the Prince brand retired. Note the emblem changes.

But before we get to that I think we have the Super Six, which is one of my most loved Japanese designs (and has a bit of a look of the Plymouth Fury to it IMHO)






Spoiler alert : You're going to see more of these later in the competition cars collection.

So the Cedric was also originally a Prince name plate, and these also have a feel of some Americana in the styling, with elements of Rambler or Studebaker in there. Also there's a strong vibe of "large Fiat" which makes me wonder if Studio Michelotti had any hand in these? The Cedric Six was used to transport the Olympic flame back in 19something when the games were in Japan and of course the custom built car used is still extant and in the collection here.









But of course the halo car for the Prince brand was the Skyline. There are a couple of beautiful examples of the original car here in the collecton, these were effectively hand build cars with the design by Studio Michelotti in Italy. Its a wonderful looking car, could be taken for a Masseratti, Lancia or something of that ilk. But probably way easier to live with...

















We haven't even finished the first row of cars yet.

This place was insane.

[bstardchild]

I'm amazed by the content but have a question maybe slightly off topic or not

I see pre 80's cars branded as Nissan which confuses me (Not hard I know)

Was the "Datsun" brand and subsequent migration to Nissan in the 80's a UK/Europe thing and they were always sold in the home market as Nissan?

[akku]

May 9, 2023 14:18:59 GMT bstardchild said:

Was the "Datsun" brand and subsequent migration to Nissan in the 80's a UK/Europe thing and they were always sold in the home market as Nissan?

As far as I know Nissan is now and has always* been the name of the company which owns the car making facilities.

From Google....

The name Nissan originated in Japan, when founder Yoshisuke Aikawa became president of Nihon Sangyo in 1928. Primarily dealing in foundries and auto parts, Nihon Sangyo debuted on the Tokyo Stock Exchange by its ticker name NISSAN in 1933.

Originally there was a Japanese designed and built car, the DAT. DAT was the company founder's three initials. There were trucks also. This was a popular little car and the next generation was the Son of Dat. The Dat's Son if you like. The symbol for "son" is not so auspicious so they used the phonetically similar "sun" for the second sylable. This also potentially ties in with the Rising Sun of Japan. Thus the Datsun name was born a little while after Nissan bought DAT. I literally read this incredibly unlikely urban-myth style tale on a poster in the Nissan factory. When Nissan acquired the DAT company in the early '30s they moved to producing the Austin 7 rather than the locally designed DAT. This is also marking another shift from DAT to Datsun.

Nissan then bought Prince Motors in the mid 60's as they wanted a springboard into the luxury and performance market.

Nissan seem to have been early brand engineers. You may notice (and Toyota does the same with some JDM models) that there are specific logos and fonts and so on used for specific model ranges of car. Not as destinct as how VW has Audi, Seat, Skoda but in the same vein. For example "CROWN" is a sub-brand of Toyota. There are like 3 or 4 CROWN models typically on sale. This is now being rationalised though, the new CROWN is a sort of SUV. In the same way Datsun, Prince, and later Cedric, Gloria, Laurel become brands and sub brands. There were also light truck brands TAMA and Cablight. Nissan had (kinda still has in Japan) different sales channels for all these brands under what they called "Bluebird line" and "Prince line" and so on. This is now "simply" Nissan Blue and Nissan Red. Don't ask me why.

Also slightly ironic is that the Gloria and the Cedric end up being basically 2 different packaging options of the same car when they were originally rivals back in the early 60s (Datsun made the Cedric and Prince made the Gloria) - the other long living name to come from Prince was Skyline. I'm not sure if the Cedric and Gloria continued to be sold in different sales channels after the Prince name was dropped but the Prince Line dealer channel existed into the 80s (and its what the Red Line was based on)

Doing a small amount of digging it seems that in Japan, the more luxurious cars carried Nissan branding (for a while at least) and sold through the Prince dealer chain and the more entry models sold with a Datsun name and through other dealer networks.

The Datsun name was phased out globally during the 1980s to help consolidate branding, and also I suspect that the 1970s Datsuns had gotten quite the reputation for rust in the US and UK and some other key export markets.

Thats a lot more wordy than you wanted I guess.

Also I disclaim errors and mix ups in my retelling of this tale!

[ratchart]

I do love this thread as there's so much that's new to me.

Is there any sort of lay person's guide to the various Japanese car styles and subcultures? I understand Kei cars as the small cars under a certain size, and Bozo-thingamybob being the cartoonish cars with extended fronts, crazy exhausts and so on. after that it gets a bit confusing for me.

[braaap]

Same here with me. grizz has just posted some of these mega cambered cars that got me thinking.

Maybe worth another individual thread about nippon car culture?

[rattlecan]

May 9, 2023 14:18:59 GMT bstardchild said:

I'm amazed by the content but have a question maybe slightly off topic or not

I see pre 80's cars branded as Nissan which confuses me (Not hard I know)

Was the "Datsun" brand and subsequent migration to Nissan in the 80's a UK/Europe thing and they were always sold in the home market as Nissan?

Not quite what you asked, but I vividly remember my Mum having a 1971 (K’ reg) Datsun Cherry, but it said Nissan on the steering wheel & (I think) glovebox lid.
I always remember thinking at the time, what is all the Nissan thing about

[grizz]

May 9, 2023 16:35:38 GMT braaap said:

Same here with me. grizz has just posted some of these mega cambered cars that got me thinking.

Maybe worth another individual thread about nippon car culture?

Posted the pics, bitting my lip, but clearly not biting hard enough.

I absolutely do not get those silly extremes, you can do absolutely nothing with those cars.

BUT, they are pretty.

[akku]

The Bosozuko thing is interesting as its very much associated with Japan but is very much "not Japanese" in culture. My brother, being a long time Japanese resident and employed in a field associated to law enforcement has a particular view on it. The phrase means "running wild" or "out of control" or similar, and is intented to be outrageous and disrespectful. Not very Japanese! It started off like the hot rod and biker gang stuff we are used to hearing about from the US but morphed into what is basically a recruiting model for organised crime. You do your apprenticeship in the bosozuko then get recruited into one of the yakusa organisations. the lurid cars, bikes and dress sense is intended as a sort of proof of how hard you are. I don't know enough about it to say whether its like the lowrider culture in the US where there is both a gang element and a law abiding element, where folks have taken stylistic influence from the criminal gangs (and in US low riding it was really the other way round, the gangs taking the style)

But theres none of that in my photos because when I asked to try find stuff I was just told it was criminal activity, drugs, pimps and so on and we were going nowhere near it.

I also wanted to try find the illegal night street racing but also got a flat no on that one as well

oh well.

[akku]

S'pose we need to look at the early evolution of the Datsun 1200 - Bluebird family. Japan's Ford Cortina I guess, everyone's family there had a Bluebird or two back in the day. The early ones have a definite Fiat 1100 vibe to me.









There is literally no relationship to the Morris Oxford, but I get Hindustan Ambassador vibes here.

Or maybe even Moskvich



Now I'm feeling Hillman Minx.



If Michelotti never came to style these, then the buys in Yokohama were thinking of his work when they penned them.




Sorry, no idea whats going on here. Maybe it was the millionth Datsun or something.























From here the collection goes into the Leopards and Sentras and so on. No Stanzas. More of that stuff later


I think this is a 510, with different styling touches, it was parked away from the other 510s though. You tell me... Badged "Nissan L" rather than Datsun.

[igor]

I believe Isuzu made Rootes Group cars under licence at some point. Happy to stand corrected if any of you have more/better information.

[akku]

May 9, 2023 22:50:10 GMT igor said:

I believe Isuzu made Rootes Group cars under licence at some point. Happy to stand corrected if any of you have more/better information.

I haven't heard that before. I shall investigate because that's fascinating as an idea. Isuzu has an obvious relationship to General Motors who owned Vauxhall and Opel for a long while.

[akku]

Moving on from the fabulous hand built Michelotti Prince Skyline we get a far more mundane in aspect, but no less delightful mass production Skyline, now available as a saloon and estate. These were sold as a smaller counterpart to the Gloria and were aimed at the Cedric until Nissan bought Prince and the Skyline becomes a higher place model. I would take any of these home and love them long and hard.































































I seem to have missed getting photos of the R34s - I'm sure there were a couple and a Stagea which I can't find a photo of.



Crazy graphics are because this one was a test mule.

[braaap]

May 10, 2023 9:11:14 GMT akku said:

Crazy graphics are because this one was a test mule.

And it's wearing a german plate for test driving or transfer trips, mainly used by car dealers, maybe by Nissan Germany, too.
I don't know if they ever had a headquarter in Bonn, which is the city BN stands for. Mazda e.g. sits in Leverkusen, that's why most Mazda cars shown in pics in (german) car magazines have a LEV plate. Unlike Porsches and Mercs wearing S plates, VWs WOB, Audis IN and BMW M plates (M for munich not motorsport).

[akku]

So, Nissan trucks...

Nissan have been making trucks since before they were Nissan. The DAT trucks were about from like 1915 or something

When Nissan bought DAT and turned it into Datsun they started spinning off truck brands and sub brands.

Appologies if I have repeated any photos BTW

TAMA, Cablight and Cabstar. All of this appears to have been folded into the Datsun Truck line which itself was under the Bluebird Line

Then theres Nissan commercial vehicles and they probably made tractors too....

[akku]

The other end of the scale from trucks is luxury cars, and I have always been a fan of the Nissan President, but I don't recall ever seeing this first version...













Something there makes me feel "Holden"

Anyway, the President I am more familiar with is














A marvellous old machine.

Here's the final(?) version




Theres a story online of a high end Infiniti - a G50 - which I can find nothing about on Google but the only pics I found looked like it was a Nissan President of this series. Anyone know anything?

There was only one Infiniti in the collection



I only just found out that the Nissan Cedric was fitted with a President motor and sold in the US as an Infiniti G45.

[grizz]

Great thread, as is usually the case with your reports.

[vertex]

Any moderators know why I'm not getting any pics it's only Started happening recently

I had this issue years ago on another forum which doesn't exist now to check

[calecosse]

Really enjoying this trip coverage, always been a massive fan of all things jdm! Bit new for here but I had this y34 cedric as a daily for a bit, loved it but fuel costs made it unsustainable to daily. Not quite as luxurious as a president but still a pretty nice place to be. 

[igor]

I once drove a colleague's 260C (or possibly 240C, was a long time ago now) and it felt a lot like an older Holden.