The Datsun 200B was an immensely popular if humble, mainstream Japanese family sedan during its 1977-81 run in Australia: a Camry before there was a Camry, if you will. But while the history of the Camry reveals a car that rose to the top and stayed there, the tale of the 200B and its successors shows a different and distinctly downward trajectory.
In high school, I had a classmate who inherited from her father a banana yellow 200B wagon. I jokingly called it “the Daaaaht-sun” – closer to how Americans pronounce the name than the Aussie pronunciation of “DAT-sun” – and it was easily the most distinctive car in the student parking lot. Everyone else had a Hyundai Excel or a Mitsubishi Mirage, and here was this bright yellow, 1970s station wagon. Well, suffice it to say, this 200B looks a little edgier than my classmate’s old wagon. The owner of this particular 200B has made some minor modifications – lowered suspension, bigger wheels, JDM mirrors – and the result is rather appealing.
The 200B was the Australian market version of what North American Curbsiders would know as the 810, and other Curbsiders may know as the Bluebird. While the 810 was powered by a straight-six and positioned as a more upscale offering, the 200B was targeted directly at Aussie fleet and family buyers. As the name suggests, it was powered by a 2.0 four-cylinder engine, producing 97 hp. Initially, the 200B range – coupe, sedan and wagon – was imported from Japan and featured an independent rear suspension. However, when the 200B made the switch to local production, the IRS was ditched in favor of a live axle with coil springs and trailing arms to meet local content targets; the wagon always had a live rear axle with leaf springs.
Although it initially received a frosty reception from the press, Datsun’s Australian operations made some meaningful improvements during the car’s run. Even the new rear suspension was regarded by some automotive journalists as not being the retrograde step it appeared on paper. The slow-selling, imported coupe was axed in 1979, and the sporty SSS – sporty in suspension tuning, but offering no extra power – was replaced by the locally-developed SX, which followed a similar formula. I don’t know how many SX models the company sold but trust me: the 200Bs remaining on Australia’s roads look a lot more like my old classmate’s wagon than the tape-striped curiosity pictured above.
The 200B dominated the mid-size sedan segment, outselling the rival Toyota Corona. But its glory was short-lived: Mitsubishi had launched their crisp, Galant-based Sigma in 1977 and it became the segment’s best-seller. Each of the offerings from Mitsubishi, Datsun/Nissan and Toyota continued to follow the same conventional formula long after it had become passé in Europe and North America. The 200B was replaced in 1981 with the Bluebird which – déjà vu – may have looked like the 1981 810 Maxima but lacked the six-cylinder engine, IRS and most other especially desirable features of that model. Underneath the more angular and contemporary sheetmetal was the same basic car as the 200B, with the same engine. Again, a “sporty” trim level was offered, the TR.X; unlike the featured 200B, this TR.X appears to be entirely stock.
Mitsubishi and Toyota, too, offered “sports” models like the Corona SR and Sigma GSR. But as the 1980s progressed, these Japanese intermediates didn’t – any revisions were predominantly cosmetic. Sales remained strong, owing to the conservative nature of many Australian buyers. The Bluebird was the stodgiest of the three Japanese models by far: it still offered only a carburetted 2.0 four-cylinder, while the bland Corona at least had an optional fuel-injected 2.4 and Mitsubishi had the torquey Astron 2.6 and, briefly, a turbo four. Anyone seeking driving excitement probably wasn’t cross-shopping these mid-size models, however.
By the mid-1980s, Mitsubishi replaced the Sigma with the thoroughly modern and well-packaged Magna, Toyota finally embraced the front-wheel-drive Camry and Nissan entered the modern era with a daring, advanced, stylish front-wheel-drive model.
Just kidding. They launched the rear-wheel-drive Pintara.
Nowadays, rear-wheel-drive is revered as the most desirable drive format. That may be so but I can assure you there is nothing especially dynamic about a Bluebird TR.X or a Pintara. While Nissan had a front-wheel-drive Bluebird, Stanza and Maxima in other markets, they chose to stick with their old formula in Australia. The boxy RWD Pintara/Skyline proved to be a disappointment for Nissan. Its replacement was a version of the FWD U12 Bluebird/US Stanza badged as the Pintara, which helped kill Nissan’s Australian manufacturing operations. The first Altima was imported here for a few years and badged as the Bluebird, right as the yen soared and Japanese cars’ MSRPs followed suit. At that point, Nissan simply gave up and went without a conventional mid-size sedan for 17 years. That’s the story of Nissan’s Aussie intermediates: from soaring like an eagle, to dead as a dodo in just two decades.
Related Reading:
CC Outtake: 1978-87 Mitsubishi Sigma – Hugely Popular Becomes Hugely Rare
CC Capsule: 1979-83 Toyota Corona (T130) Wagon – Mint Mediocrity
Curbside Capsule: 1983-87 Toyota Corona – The Sun Sets On The RWD, Japanese Intermediate
Curbside Classic: 1982 Datsun (Nissan) Maxima (810) Diesel Wagon – Bitching Betty
Nice looking car. Here in North America, it’s called the Datsun 810, from 1981 on, it was called the Datsun (Nissan) Maxima. I don’t know why the change in name.
+ 1
I remember Nissan’s advertising campaign to teach Americans how to pronounce ‘Datsun’.
The slogan was “Datsun’s nice car”…. So we came by our (mis?)pronunciation honesty ….
Edit: while I swear I remember that, I can’t find any trace of it on line….
But I did find this page of cool old magazine ads for cars
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/242842604878760295/
So if Nissan Australia didn’t find a replacement for the Bluebird/Altima for nearly 2 decades, what was the bulk of their sales in Oz? Did they concentrate on utes more of less?
Sadly, Ford, Toyota and GM-Holden are winding down their Australian manufacturing as well…
What I find unforgivable about that is that Australian workers will no longer be working, building something. What else is there for them to do once they’re laid off work? I’m sure many of them want to work.
Nissan folded their tent during the lates 80s ealy 90s financial crisis and ran back to Japan there was some mandated model sharing with Ford but Nissan just faded from the market really only selling Pulsars, Navaras & Patrols nothing much else got any traction. Constantly replacing headgaskets on RWD Bluebirds gets old quickly and trust in Datsun products waned.
How is one able to do that, and still remain a viable company? That’s never made sense.
Nissan’s mainly an SUV and light truck company in Australia, and that seems to provide enough cash flow keep them going. They’ve pretty much been that way for the last 20 years, avoiding the medium and large car segments, and selling a very ordinary small car (Tiida, now renamed Pulsar) that most people seem to ignore. Theoretically the Micra is/was available too. But there’s been this massive yawning chasm in their model range for so long that most people seem to forget Nissan do cars too.
Might be different in the city, but here in the country you see more Altimas in V8 Supercar racing than you do on the street. New Nissan cars seem very few and far between these days – a far cry from the early seventies.
Nice write up, those 200Bs really werent anything special even the tape stripe model, there were a few lowered wheel widened loud exhaust Datsuns in the Huon area of Tas done up by local boy racers for fun on the twisty targa stage local roads but by far the more popular cars were mid 70s Toranas for fast driving on twisty roads, Australia didnt get the early FWD Bluebirds I know, but NZ did. I see some still rattling along locally Datsun/Nissan did the usual Japanese transition thing and simply planted a FWD front subframe into the RWD car the 85 Bluebird youve shown was the intended victim petrol and diesel models were built and both varieties are still on the roads here most likely they are used refugees from the shaken test but they appear to last ok Ive only seen one RWD Bluebird in the last five years,
The Skyline series reveered by boy racers really was a turd ill handling and not particularly fast the very few touring cars versions made and fast and fatuous movies have kept the illusion of a sporty car alive we have an endless stream of tedious four door Skylines with fat rims and stretched tyres with a fart cannon holding up traffic on the highways, good engines especially the diesel, but thats about it,
The car known as a 200B, except in the U.S. also had a different front end treatment from what is pictured on the white car in the print ad. Here, the 810 had a (VERY) vaguely BMW-like from grille design, that is, 2 rectangular openings with the headlights NOT inside the grilles but close beside them.
A co-worker had an 810 2 door coupe that he wasn’t sure he wanted to keep, so I got to test drive it one afternoon. These cars (the 4 door models, not the 2 door coupes) were heavily advertised as “the four door sports car”….with 4DSC decals fastened to the rear, side door windows. If that 2 door I drove was any indication the decals were a bit misleading. The 6 cylinder engine pulled these cars along quite nicely and the automatic transmission shifted quite smooth, but the handling was barely what would be considered as sporty….much less sports car like.
These 810s also had great interiors, full instrumentation that stretched across the dashboard, almost like a 280Z, big (but flat) bucket-like seats in front, and IIRC the upholstery was a sort of subdued plaid….at least in the 2 doors.
But for all that, I found the 2 door (NON-hatchback) Accord coupe a more…compelling (?) car to look at and perhaps own.
I guess I should mention that I drove the 810 above in 1989-90.
I seem to remember the front end treatment of the 200B was an Aussie effort. The original front was an ugly buck-toothed affair.
There seemed to be two different models or was it just the grille got changed ironically I just saw one with the other grille today after not seeing one for ages some here in NZ were labelled 180B still having the 1800 motor.
it was probably more than just the grille. If I pulled out some old magazines I could answer you, but it’s a dud-era Nissan, so…(yawn!).
My wife’s first car, she still had had it when we married. Soon replaced by its deadly rival, the RT 140 Corona. Both were dull appliances, but they served her well.
On the SX, Wheels magazine commented on the sex allusion in the SX name, with the words “the engine noise will have given her a headache before you get there”
The things one remembers when prompted………..
Hehehe…Remember the billboards, white car on black ground and the message “Everything you need to know about SX”?
I grew up on the BC west coast in the ’70’s, and everyone I knew pronounced the car name DAT-sun and the parent company NISS-an. Oh were our faces red when we found the sophisticated people knew it was really NEEEsahn.
The 200B is not the same as the 6-cyl 810, it has a shorter front end to suit the shorter engine. Same for the Bluebird vs Maxima. On the other hand the Pintara was not different in the body from the Skyline – the volume would not have justified it.
The saying was the 200B was a 180B (aka 610 Bluebird) with 20 more mistakes, they are still pretty unloved really. On the other hand Nissan did pretty well with the early 80s 910 Bluebird including making their mark in touring car racing, a replica of Allan Grice’s race car is pictured.
I don’t think the rwd Pintara was a mistake for Nissan, it helped volume for the new local assembly of the Skyline that commenced in 1986 with the R31 generation, and definitely had a Unique Selling Proposition against the fwd competition. I don’t think the following U12 Pintaras did any better, and they were overshadowed by the larger Camry and Magnas.
From what I recall, the combined Pintara/Skyline sales never came close to matching Falcon or Commodore sales and that’s with a huge range of both four- and six-cylinder sedans and wagons. And as you say yourself, there wasn’t enough volume to justify different bodies which shows where Nissan’s Aussie operations were sitting by the mid/late-1980s.
You’re right though, the U12 was about as successful, possibly even less so. Nissan Australia had quality control issues at the time and the U12 was heavily rumoured to be a new-for-Australia model (“Project Matilda”) and came out a barely modified Stanza/Bluebird… with an ugly “Superhatch” available.
I didn’t mean the 200B was an exact duplicate of the 810, but merely that they shared the same platform and basic body.
No the sales would have been significantly less, but so were everything else on the market, the sort of thing that prompted the infamous Button plan. I’ll have a look at my old magazines to find some numbers.
Fair enough, it just sounded like you were describing the US car with a 4-cyl swapped in so I thought it was worth pointing out the difference for readers (if they make it this far down the comments!).
It was cars like this that led to Nissan being taken over by Renault. Unfortunately I don’t really know if they have really improved since then. Their car range is lacklustre at best.
I had the misfortune of hiring a Micra this time last year, and drove to Hervey Bay with my sister. One of the first things she said was ” I didn’t know these were diesel”.
It wasn’t….