Yes kids, thirty years after shitcanning it as an ongoing branding concern, the Nissan Motor Company are bringing back the mighty Datto. And I for one am thrilled to bits. Because like most of the known first world, old busted-arse Dattos are iconic of all Aussie and Kiwi motoring adolescence. Whether it's the memory of a shitbox 120Y in the wanted baby-poo green-brown-whatthefuckISthatcolour, or rat-arsed 1200s and 1600s howling and gargling gravel down some long-forgotten 70s rally stage, or Farmer George Fury whistling the factory Bluebird around Mount Panorama... by which stage they were officially called Nissan, but by fuck it was still a fucken DATTO. Even Allan Grice, one hell of a great racer at Bathurst before he became one hell of a shit Nats MP for Broadwater, put it well back in 1991 when having scored a hard-fought podium behind the all-conquering Nissan GT-R, quipped 'the Datsuns were too strong for us today'.
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| Datsun Saves... long ball to Valiant, crosses to Torana XU1... GOOOOOAAAALLLL |
Dattos were ALWAYS shit. It started with the names - Cedrics and Fairladys and Sunnys and Stanzas (neatly echoed by the Nissan Tiidas, Qashqais and Jukes of today, indicating the parent company still picks its names on the basis of a thousand monkeys vomiting on a thousand typewriters - but it seemed a Datto was never actually new, but always suspended in a particular kind of mid-70s crapitude, characterised by being desperately fucking gutless, handling like a binliner of warm livers and having all the poon-pulling power of a freshly polished goitre.
So it was for my first car, a powder-blue 1976 Datsun 180B with a vinyl rooflining resplendent in Benaud Beige, metal sunshade, wind deflectors and no-speed auto. It's hard to deny the fact that it was a real nanna's car. I know this because I inherited it off my real nanna. She went to a better place... a 1995 Suzuki Baleno. Only marginally better, granted. I went on to better things myself, an '88 six-cylinder Skyline. Still keeping within the Nissan family, though.
My theory is that a large proportion of the Western world's formative motoring experiences were had in Dattos, or their immediate descendents. The most terrified I have ever been in a motor vehicle was on the narrow, twisty, undulating back road between Faulconbridge and Springwood in a mate's urinary-tract-infection-yellow 1981 Bluebird with stale Cruskits for brake pads and overtensioned pogo sticks for shocks.
Apart from the other mate with a Pintara and a deathwish.
It's sure - and almost somewhat sad - that the new Datsuns won't be anywhere near as shit as those dusty '70s relics of memory. They'll be basic, reliable and frugal, and as far away from the 120Y (or even the Nissan Juke-R) as feasibly imaginable. And worst of all, they won't be coming here. Nissan has earmarked the Datsun brand for developing markets, like India, Indonesia and Russia.
So looks like the only new Datsuns you're getting hold of anytime soon is this.
Play it loud.
The Doctor is OUT.
11 comments:
Man, I had a powder blue 180B too.. although mine was practically new when I got it.. I daresay yours had seen a few more laps.... I also owned at various life stages an orange Stanza, another powder blue Bluebird.. which I still maintain to this day is the shittiest car I have EVER owned, and probably one of the best cars I have ever owned, a fire engine red Datsun 260Z which high revved and wailed and screamed like the very Hounds of Hell. That car was years ahead of any car of its time. Many years later I drove a Ferrari and it reminded me of the 260Z.... Datsuns... Loved em.. but if you said it when I was young you were beaten up by the General and Blue Oval mob.
Just recalled the time I was in the back seat of my great aunts mustard 120Y as she barrelled up the wrong side of the Pacific Hwy at Buladelah screaming at oncoming traffic to "Fuck Off Out Of The Way"... I was about 10 and as I learned many years later, Aunty Neta had a serious issue with gin.
I'm too young to have owned a Dato - no, really. But I vividly remember rolling around the backseat with my brother and sister when mum took a corner in third. She loved that car. Mum still calls it her favourite...but then Grandad was a Rover man...and she did famously drive around Bathurst the wrong way.
I learnt to drive in my Mums 200B SX. She used to have it sideways a often as it pointed forward.
A mate at uni had a baby poo green 120Y. Our favourite stunt was to do bob sled starts at the traffic lights along Coro Drive.
These are all tremendous. Agreed, Bluebirds were rancid, Z-cars were terrific, and 120Ys were troubled by the mere concept of getting out of their own way. Spank, I'm expecting the greatest risk was in outrunning the vehicle in question
Slightly OT, but I think the entire excess production of 1995 Suzuki Balenos was dumped in Tassie - they were the only possible car to hire there at that time.
One of Dad's mates had a '67 Datto ute on his farm outside of Gunnedah which was used as the cross paddock transport and spotlight platform for fox shooting. As a 10 y.o. I learnt how to drive around paddocks, pick out fox eyes and maintain a beam on the quarry and that shotties are loud fuckers. After one failed chase he stopped the ute, yelling out 'Fer fucks sake you blokes, I could have flogged that fucken fox along with me cock!"
A funny bloke was Albert, who hated foxes with a passion, especially in lambing season.
My best mate at school had an absolutely tremendous brown 180B - went like the clappers!
Lerm
Gods there was a reason it was named with a Y, not sure there were only 120 reasons Y not. Though Datsun certainly redeemed themselves with Z series.
If the 120Y was made today, it'd be the 120WTF.
Datto 1200s. Now they were all right. But the Datto ute I had when I was doing spare parts delivery sucked knob. A handbrake with all the stopping power of custard, seriously approximate steering and the smooth ride of a camel with rickets.
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