In May, I reported a story about a blackjack dealer who died in 1997 from an apparent explosives accident in an Arizona desert. His car, a 1980 Datsun, was left out there for 21 years, until recently, when total strangers from a Facebook group united the car with the man’s son, who got straight to wrenching. What he…
You see this here neon green 1972 Datsun 240Z? You see how it has bronze wheels? Fender flares? I would drive the shit out of this thing. I would do unspeakable things to own it.
On July 23, 1997, blackjack dealer Mark Blackburn was found dead in an empty Arizona desert from injuries stemming from an apparent explosives accident. Police left his 1980 Datsun B310 at the scene, and now, 21 years later, Mark’s son, Michael, and his daughter, Lalani, are on a quest to find and recover the car.…
The period immediately after WWII was, I think, one of the most interesting for cars, at least in the countries that didn’t come out of the war in such great shape. The lack of almost everything—money, materials, fuel, everything—forced some genuinely creative solutions to the very tricky problem of how to make cars…
I got quite a bit of my love of cars from my father, but the people his age that I knew never seemed to understand why I loved Toyota Supras, Mazda rotary engines and various examples of how Nissan used to give a damn. But the people who did grow up appreciating these kinds of cars are now after them in a big way, and…
Last month, we told you the story of Uzi Nissan, the small North Carolina businessman who ended up fighting off a $10 million lawsuit from Nissan Motor Company over his computer retail business website, www.nissan.com. Now, you can hear from Uzi himself on what exactly the automaker put him through.
Suburban mall parking lots aren’t always home to cars that capture anyone’s attention. Aside from the dad in a lifted F-350 covered in Punisher stickers, none of the cars typically ever stick out.
I went to Dallas to talk to John Redding about the 1966 Datsun 1600 Roadster that’s been hidden away in his storage space for years. On my second evening there, we were standing in front of that storage space, and he wasn’t crying, but his voice was quivering. I asked him if he was okay.
Here in America, it’s easy to forget that people once sincerely feared that “import cars”—specifically cheap, well-built, reliable cars from Japan—would put the U.S. auto industry out of business. That’s hard to believe today where companies like Ford and Toyota compete on an equal footing, but in the United Kingdom,…
It may not look like much, but the Datsun 510 was a legend. Ben Hsu, author of Classic Japanese Performance Cars, says it “put not just Nissan, but Japanese cars in general, on the map.” So now we should all watch TheSmokingTire hoon the 510 so we can reminisce upon a time when Nissan was actually cool.
See that? I had to make up a word there to figure out how I feel about this ‘70s/80s-era body kit for Datsun B210s called the Datsun 210ZX. The word is a portmanteau of ‘awful’ and ‘wonderful,’ because that’s exactly what this kit was: not wonderfully awful or awfully wonderful, but somehow both at once.
I suppose there’s some lesson here about being careful what you say when joking. This particular lesson comes from Mai-Lee Acea, who told her husband, Tomas, that he could bring his ‘87 Nissan 300ZX project car inside their Miami-area house to protect it from Hurricane Irma.
Earlier this week there were three concurrent tropical storms, including the most powerful Atlantic storm ever recorded, which is following up another storm that had just battered Texas. The only thing to do to prepare is to buy this 1978 Datsun 6x6 pickup truck.
Former Nissan designer Yoshihiko Matsuo is the hero we need right now: a true believer in designing fun cars for the common man. His legendary 240Z went on to spawn an entire lineage of Datsun and Nissan Z cars. Yet Matsuo’s bosses at Nissan corporate thought he was insane for even suggesting a car like the first Z.…
Nissan used to have cars with goofy names like Fairlady, Bluebird, Stanza and Violet, but they could all whoop your ass if they wanted to.
There is a special place in my heart, and the hearts of many Jalops, for Datsun. Back in summer, Jalopnik East spoke to the curator of the Nissan Engine Museum, Maeda Hiromasa (前田博正), about the return of Datsun to India, and its legacy in North America. The love of Datsun is clear in these couple of examples at TAS…
