Strictly speaking this rare and RHD 1974 Datsun wasn’t attending the 2016 Ewijk Festijn I visited recently. But who cares ? After I left the show and walked back to my car I came across this specialty. At first I really had no idea what I was looking at (Datsun experts can laugh now).
The capital D on the grille was the only thing that did ring a bell. I checked its plate and it turned out to be registered as a 1974 Datsun 200L Hardtop. And that’s the two-door hardtop coupe-version of the 1972-1977 second generation Laurel, the C130-series. None of the Laurel generations ever made it to the US.
According to its registration there’s a 1,990 cc 4-cylinder engine under the hood, 91 kW~124 hp. The G20 SOHC engine was originally a Prince engine, who’s roots trace back to 1955. Given the power rating, this is the most powerful SU twin carburetor version. The Laurel also was available with the Prince six cylinder, in 2.0, 2.6 and 2.8 L forms.
Rear wheel drive and independent front and rear suspension.
Nicknamed the Pig’s Butt Laurel.
Very thoughtful of the owner to leave the side windows open. As said above, it has RHD and a 4-speed manual.
I like this car. The tail end is a bit unusual, but the 2 door hardtop configuration is nicely done.
I have always wondered about the reason for those JDM mirrors mounted way out front on the fenders. My 1959 Plymouth mounted a rear view mirror far enough out front that it was viewed through the (curved) windshield, and I always found the field of view very small. Is there some benefit to these that I am not seeing?
I had similarly mounted mirrors on my Jaguar 420G. Frigging nuisance to adjust when knocked and – as you’ve said – small field of vision but damn they looked good way up front. Apart from aesthetics, I’m also curious as to why.
I think it’s a Japanese-spec car, and they mounted the mirrors way out on the fenders back in the day. Not sure why they did this.
I have always wondered about the reason for those JDM mirrors mounted way out front on the fenders
Japanese law at the time required the mirror to be seen thru the area in which the wipers cleared the windshield; this law was changed in 1983 to accommodate for changing tastes and to ease tooling costs regarding export sales.
Good to know, thanks. Still, you have to wonder what was so great about seeing a mirror through the wiped area of the windshield vs. seeing the mirror through a side window where no wiping is required. But then I remember how there are a lot of laws that are somewhat uncoupled from common sense, so there we are, I suppose.
Reduced or eliminated blindspots. Fender mounted mirrors also don’t stick out as much as door mounted ones (narrower overall width), important in crowded Japanese cities with very tight parking. They were legally mandated back then. Not sure when that regulation was relaxed, likely as a result of barrier lowering trade liberalization deals.
I remember that young guys with long hair and sideburns (we’re talking early seventies here) with race track aspirations sometimes had fender mounted mirrors on their Opel or Ford. See Opel Ascona A below.
My ’92 Laurel (C33 shape) had factory fender mirrors way out front – it was an ex-JDM-driving-school car, and they often specified fender mirrors. Mine were fully electric though, and adjusted from inside the car using the same control as used for door mounted mirrors. Field of view was indeed small but much wider then door-mounted mirrors, so they were absolutely fantastic when towing a caravan – I didn’t need clip-on extension mirrors like I do with door-mounted mirrors.
Fender-mount mirrors (in lieu of door-mount) remained an option for the Laurel, and its bigger siblings the Cedric and Gloria until the early-mid 2000s. In fact, the Y34 Nissan Gloria, which was sold in the USA as the Gen2 Infiniti M45, was available with fender mirrors!
Was the Laurel a “hardy” performer? Couldn`t resist!
Perhaps, but if you own one, it is a great place to rest. 🙂
Peak styling period for Nissan. This along with the 230/330 Cedric and 110 Skyline are just the bees knees, not the pig’s butt. Fantastic find Johannes.
+1.
+2
Looks very nice .
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Forward mounted mirrors are so you don’t have to turn your head as far .
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Usually they were slightly parabolic , greatly increasing the field of view .
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Yes , a pisser when passing tossers knocked them askew .
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-Nate
Sorry to be a prig, because you seem like a nice guy, Nate. But this business of making sure your comments take up extra space and then signing them, as if everyone can’t already tell who wrote it, is just a little too precious.
You’re no prig .
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I get many replies that use another name plus most of the hate filled cowards are afraid to sign their comments , I am not .
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Internet etiquette is not my forte .
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-Nate
Pig’s butt or not, I find this Laurel to be quite the stylish number. Shame we never got it Stateside. Like the wheel choice, too, and the deep chin spoiler even looks right.
Some beautiful Japanese coupes were produced in the 70’s. Not a bad line anywhere on this one!
Looks a bit like the 610 coupe we got in the U.S..
Never heard of that one, pig butt or not?
I assume that one isn’t stock, what are they actually supposed to look like? Every image on Google search is a modified car…
I assume this one is stock.
Yeahh thats how it looked when you opened the packet, gaudy and ornate the one you found in the wild is a vast improvement.
Well, no spoiler and wheel trims instead of alloys.
And 70s puke green
Looks way better than it would’ve with gigantic 5 mph U.S. spec bumpers. Pig’s butt, for sure, then.
Geez, is that a pretty car!!! Imagine it with U.S. bumpers… UGH!!!
Looking at the picture in J. Dutch’s post you can see where the styling for the 1st one or two generations of B210 came from. Also looks somewhat like a more expensive 710 coupe.
Some of the Nissans from the 70s were quite good looking while others looked like the boxes they came in.
Oh Johannes, Johannes, Johannes… You found a Butaketsu!!! The lesser-known sibling of the mighty C110 Nissan Skyline GTR. Even more rare, but just as gloriously 1970s-JDM! As the world’s biggest Laurel fan, and proud former owner of several, this post is now officially my favourite CC ever! The only thing that would be more awesome would be finding an afore-mentioned C110 curbside…which I did late last year! Standard C130 Laurel hardtop below, narrow wheels and the engine looks lost in the engine bay:
Well, I’m certainly familiar with the Datsun~Nissan Laurel sedans from the seventies and eighties, but I never saw (or even heard of) a Butaketsu / Pig’s Butt before…
Y’know, except for some of the JDM-specific touches and the narrow overall width, the C130 strikes me as the sort of thing Chrysler designers might have come up with if they’d designed an in-house ‘subcompact’ [sic*] rather than filling out the smaller end of the lineup with Rootes Group and Mitsubishi captive imports. I could see this fitting pretty comfortably next to the Duster and ’71 Satellite/Charger hardtops.
* The C130 Laurel is longer than most current C-segment sedans, which are already too big to reasonably call “subcompact,” but by the weird standards of early ’70s U.S. cars, it would probably have been lumped in with same.