Austin Nissan (Read 181 times)

[Al Ramone]

been looking up the relationship between Austin and Nissan. mainly because i'm getting fed up with hearing people spout about usual "the japs copying the british..." ect. and wanted to understand how, what and why there is a relationship.

found this
www.austinmemories.com/page117/page117.html

which kinda makes sense of it all. and tells how the Nissan plant was bombed during WW2 and that after the war, the occupying forces rebuilt the factory but restricted the manufacture of cars, meaning that the Nissan car designs went out of date. so when Nissan were allowed to produce cars, rather then starting from scratch, they did a deal with Austin, so they could assemble the A40 under licence and get up and running and producing suitable cars in good time. and during the 10years after they gradually phased out the Austin parts and produced their own in there place.

so. is that pretty accurate?

[datsfun]

Jun 12, 2013 23:35:24 GMT 1 Al Ramone said:

been looking up the relationship between Austin and Nissan. mainly because i'm getting fed up with hearing people spout about usual "the japs copying the british..." ect.

I just tell them, ..yes that's true! Usually kills the conversation .

More recently I told a fella who was banging on about the same topic.." true, in fact did you know that a skylinER is actually a copy of a ford sierra? I think he got the message

[Deleted]

Would be interesting to know if any of these Japanese built Austins still survive.

[s20]

Quite a few survive in Japan. One lived just a few doors away from me when I lived in Tokyo in the late 1980s.

Nissan have three in their Heritage Collection. They are very proud of them. It was a very important part of Nissan's post-war story.

[Al Ramone]

i would like to get a few small writes ups done so they can be shown at any classic cars shows i/we attend.

little write up on Nissan history and the companies that joined it. maybe a thing on common misconceptions of Japanese cars as well.

unfortunately i'm not the most knowledgeable or the best writer so unless someone else comes up with something it's going to take some time before i do anything good.

[datstan]

I would not worry too much about people putting Datsun or jap cars down, this is very much an age thing and also a lot of throw away snobbery and popular folklore!

If you notice the Jap car scene is a young one these days, kids love them, be they retro rides or drifting etc.
They dont have any preconceptions of Datsun, they just see a cool if unusual looking car and think I fancy that rather than an old Corsa, Fiesta or 1001 usual suspects!

People want to be individuals and not follow the crowd. Yes Datsuns had a problem with rust but did every car up until the late 80's when manufacturers started to think about that! We have a 1958 Wolseley 1500, its got as many mud traps as my Datsun 100a but its survived due to its really thick metal , cute looks and owners willing to look after it? The 100a has been Ziebarted from new and although crispy in places is not at scrapper level yet. Mechanically its superb , interior is mint and the metal yes is thin but its still here because the 3 previous owners took care of it.
As an example how many Rover 215's from the 80's are on the road compared to the Honda versions?

[mash]

I was told at a car show a couple of weeks ago that my Violet was a copy of the Morris Marina.....

[Al Ramone]

Jun 21, 2013 21:11:26 GMT 1 mash said:

I was told at a car show a couple of weeks ago that my Violet was a copy of the Morris Marina.....

haha. did they have there eyes open?

i'm not sure why so many people come out with stuff like that? even in the practical classic magazine that did a write up on my 120y coupe, they said in the article that the car was a copy of a sunbeam rapier

they failed to mention, that the sunbeam rapier is a direct copy of a plymouth barracuda i guess the British public just seam to think they invented eveything and everyone else just copied them....

B210 120Y coupe came out in 1973



upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/46/1974-1979_Datsun_120Y_(B210)_coupe_01.jpg

Sunbeam Rapier came out in 1967





Plymouth Barracuda came out in 1964





i guess the truth was, America was leading the styling of the 50's 60's and 70's and everyone else was 5-10 years behind them.

[s20]

Jun 21, 2013 22:03:38 GMT 1 Al Ramone said:

i guess the truth was, America was leading the styling of the 50's 60's and 70's and everyone else was 5-10 years behind them.

I wouldn't give too much credit to the USA. For much of the second half of the 20th Century the main styling influence - setting trends that would be interpreted, re-interpreted, rehashed, imitated and bounced off of - was that of the Italian coachbuilding houses.

If anything, the American companies were following trends set by the Italian houses ( both consciously and subconciously ) and everybody else was being influenced by the reverberations. It should not be so surprising, as the function of the Italian ( and other ) coachbuilders was to build show cars, one-offs, limited production volume specialty cars and race car bodies. They were working in a field where they were bound to be leading the way, and where increasingly high volume manufacturers could only follow. Indeed, the volume manufacturers ( including many of the British marques ) contracted and commissioned the Italian coachbuilders and styling houses to come up with designs for them. There were others ( British, French, German and even Swiss ) but the big Italian houses like Pininfarina, Frua, Vignale, Zagato, Ghia, Bertone, Touring, Fissore, Scaglietti, Allemano, Boano et al led the way. Sometimes by showing where not to go....

It's frustrating to hear people say "it's a copy of....." when they look at a Japanese car ( especially when it's the very first thing that they say ) and it would be nice of they applied that level of critique to every car they look at. But they don't, do they? It would be interesting to have a more in-depth conversation on the topic, but when somebody comes up to a C10-series Skyline and tells you "...it's a copy of a Excort though, innit...", then there's probably not a lot you can say.