This pickup is utterly unique. Of all the generations of all the different Japanese mini-pickups, only this generation of Nissans has an instantly recognized and remembered name: Hardbody. Which makes things so easy; try explaining just exactly which generation Toyota pickup you mean to somebody. Or yourself. But not this hardbody, at least in the US. The brilliance of marketing, on those rare occasions when it works right.
The new Nissan D21 truck arrived for the 1986 model year, and was dubbed “Hardbody” from the get-go. The chunky styling with blistered fenders was distinctive, and set it off from the pack.
I’d forgotten how long the Hardbody was around for: 11 years. In 1997, the new D-22 Frontier finally replaced it. In its case, the “Frontier” name was official, again at least in the US.
This one is still hard at work.
I’m not sure what the two bolted-in steel posts are for, but it makes its body look even harder.
There’s no mistaking or forgetting a hardbody. Makes life simple. Isn’t that what marketers are supposed to do?
I was a paratrooper at Fort Bragg when these came out. The Nissan Hardbody image was particularly appealing to a demographic that took pride in our physical toughness. I knew a few guys that bought one of these.
The consensus among owners was that this was another “cosmetic” 4wd. Not as off road capable as a Jeep. A nice truck with a good engine, but not really any better than the competition when in the hands of a young adrenaline charged paratrooper intent on torturing the thing to find the limits of capability.
I don’t see how anyone can claim these were any sort of poseur-4wd. Very stout rigs, except for poor rust-proofing (frame and body). Travel down to Mexico some time, these D21 bodies are particularly thick on the ground, mostly in plebian 2wd guise. They definitely earn their keep, and have solid reputations for taking abuse.
This hardcore Chevy guy always admired the Hardbody, and anyone I know who owned one loved it.
Plus Nissan was On. Their. Marketing. Game. in those days.
Can anybody explain what they stand for nowadays? I sure can’t. Their innovation surely doesn’t excite me.
They’ve become the “is Pepsi ok?” of major Japanese makes.
Moving the headquarters from California to Tennessee was probably not a great idea. I bet they lost a lot of good talent.
I’d be hard pressed to make that move for any amount of money.
Another one hit out of the park by Jerry Hirshberg and his California team (edit – it looks like Tom Semple was the actual designer and who also did the Xterra, Pathfinder and Quest). Hirshberg spoke (in person) to my industrial design class at Georgia Tech in 1985. Very inspiring.
The Hardbody was the first design out of the US studio to go into production. Also the first truck to win an IDEA award.
“Hardbody” and the early Hardbody ads were indeed a stroke of marketing genius, but oddly Nissan also came out with one of the worst marketing campaigns of the late 1980s too — the “Built for the Human Race” campaign. I remember that campaign being widely ridiculed at the time, and coincided with a big drop in Nissan market share in 1988, when those ads debuted.
I wonder if the same ad company produced both Hardbody and the Human Race ads? They do have a similar vibe to them, but had vastly different results.
Maybe people were waiting for Nissan’s 1989-1990 launches, like the 240SX, 4-door Pathfinder, and redesigned Maxima and 300ZX?
Truly a stroke of marketing genius.
Hardbody was originally just an advertising strapline, and not the official model name of the truck (which was just the rather uninspiring “Nissan Truck”).
However, the name struck a chord, and that is how everyone knows this generation of Nissan truck now.
It would be kind of like everyone referring to their their Chevrolet trucks as “Rock” when the Like a Rock campaign was running.
And the Hardbody alias D21 was still sold in Venezuela until 2014. https://web.archive.org/web/20141016172150/http://www.nissan.net.ve/ambard2101.htm
And it was also sold as Navara in Australia. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1989_Nissan_Navara_(D21)_4-door_utility_(2010-09-19)_01.jpg
These were marketed as the “Nissan Costaud” in Quebec – costaud generally translates as “sturdy”.
Perhaps in Blake Edwards’ version of France, it could have been the Nissan Clousaeu…
Not quite the same resonance as ‘Hardbody’ in English…
Custard?
Costco?
Oh my yes was this a successful truck and ad campaign. My father had an 81 or 82 Datsun King Cab 4×4 pickup and maybe as a result of that one I was not crazy about the styling on the 86. And when I first saw the ads I thought the “Hardbody” name was a little hokey.
But they nailed it. My sister and BIL bought one. When she told me they bought a new truck and I asked what it was, her reply was “A Hardbody”. Pure genius and I officially take back my “hokey” comment from 1986. 🙂
Ah, back in the days when Nissan and Toyota still made small pick-up trucks before they became luxury cars with a bed on the back. You saw these and other small trucks everywhere. Great for trips to Home Depot or the dump, easy to maneuver and park, and fairly good on gas. Full sized trucks were purchased by people who really needed the use of such a vehicle on a regular basis. Now everything on the market seems to be huge trucks with bedsides so high that make it difficult to reach things in the bed. Although many of us would like to have one, I doubt we’ll ever see production of a small pick-up again.
Sold here, with the same gym-fit panels, as the Nissan Navara, an old Australian word which translates roughly as “couldn’t afford the Toyota Hilux”.
I thought these were handsome trucks when they first came out. What really made it for me were the slots at the front of the hood.
Funny because that is the worst part of the front end in my opinion.
What’s REALLY funny is that the Japanese home market version of the Hardbody does NOT have the slots in the hood, at least the early models didn’t.
When these trucks first hit the market, I was temporarily stationed in Japan. I hadn’t bought, or even driven my 1st Asian car (except for a few minutes driving a Honda N600) so I wasn’t all that tuned into JDM versus USDM vehicle differences. Yet, I really liked these Hardbody trucks and was amazed by the many but subtle differences between the ones sold in Japan and those in North America. The JDM Hardbody does not have the downward fold of the hood, it “flows” to a flat/cliff-like ending. The crease near the top of the fender on JDM Hardbodys ends ABOVE the front turn signal/parking light/side marker assembly. I think even the tail lights are different.
BTW, I would guess that those black bars above the bedsides are for cargo tie-down.
I drove one when they were new. 2wd and a 5 speed. Nice handy truck, decent handling, efficient and economical.
The rear leaf springs were quite long, relatively soft, and long-travel for a smooth ride.
But anything resembling aggressive first-gear work would induce an epileptic fit of shaking due to axle wind-up, wheel hop and axle tramp, caused by the soft, pliable leaf springs. I found this amusing because the truck was a rental and I had no respect back then.
Even normal acceleration in first gear would produce a noticeable flutter of axle wind-up. I thought this was curious because plenty of drivers would not know what this was and might be alarmed. Lower tire pressure when empty might help the problem.
The posts seem to be the remains of a bed mounted hoist. The loop to hold the handle for the jack with it still in it is a big clue. However the question is why are their two?
Its a Nissan Navara ute here mostly with a 2.3 non turbo diesel engine and 2wd versionns have a 5 speed column change, I repainted one a few years ago for my employer he just wanted it tidied up for a few more years of use it had a dropside tray and despit huge mileage still ran and drove well with cold AC. good utes
And with an SUV body it’s the Terrano isn’t it? A friend has one, hard to kill. He’s tried.
Pedantically, “Hardbody” makes more sense for a unibody vehicle instead of BOF, which most trucks are. But “Hardframe” doesn’t sound cool, though.
Marketing is applied psychology. As in military strategy, find a weakness, then exploit it. The pigeons will fall for it. But at least they weren’t being conned in this case.
I would guess that it was for a hoist to load heavy objects like motors or refrigeration compressors. I still see quite a few of these around little shops. They earn their keep. I agree that this was good marketing, the name stuck.
All in all a good truck, but the body wasn’t really all that hard! I saw a number of regular cab short bed 4X2 S.E. V-6’s towards the end of the D21’s run, and always wanted one. The D21 was a good looking truck, and had a bit more cab room than the competition.
You know, I kind of disagree about the naming being a marketing success, at least from my perspective. I would have been six years old in 1989 when these came out, and despite continuing for 11 years, I don’t recall ever seeing an ad for these pickups. It wasn’t until fairly recently, in the internet age, where I even knew that these were called Hardbody pickups. I just assumed they were “Nissan Pickups,” not unlike the Toyota pickups from the same era. I suspect that the average person, and even many car guys, don’t even know these are called Hardbody pickups. Anecdotally, I have one friend who drove one, and I also drove one at a plant nursery job, and not a single person ever referred to either as a Hardbody. Probably didn’t help that no where on the body does it say “Hardbody”- I call that a marketing mistake.
Perhaps one of the most memorable taglines in automotive marketing history. How many other auto ads inspired a documentary, in this case “Hands on a Hard Body”? The 1997 film tells the true story about a contest at a Texas dealership where the person able to hold at least one hand on a new Nissan pickup the longest won the vehicle. The contestants ruminate about their lives and motivations for winning. The film later went on to inspire a Broadway musical as well, but closed after 28 performances.
They used that schtick in an episode of My Name is Earl. He ultimately wins the car only to have his gambling-addicted ex-mother-in-law lose it playing craps at the casino.
This commercial is another brilliant piece of Nissan marketing, appealing to a different demographic.
Like the F-250 posted earlier, this is another truck that just had “it”.
I’m sure I’m in the minority but I prefer the Hardbody to the Toyota of the time.
At the autoshow when these first came out there was a base model regular cab, rubber mats and not even a radio for $7777. I thought about it briefly. I could easily add a radio for not much money. I walked away but never stopped thinking about it. A few years later I bought a second hand 2wd 4cyl. 5sp kingkab, with a radio naturally. Loved that truck so much that I bought another one when it was finished. A 2wd v6 5sd kingkab. Very slight penalty in gas mileage with the v6 which more than made up for it in torque. I liked that one so much that I bought a 4wd version when it was used up.
The 4wd with 5spd was awesome in the snow. I would deliberately get it hopelessly stuck in 2wd mode and then shift into 4-low and pull away like it was dry pavement. Unfortunately the 4×4 was driven hard and put away muddy by the previous owner and the frame eventually rotted through. Mud in places impossible to get to.
The most memorable moment was the time I was headed to Ottawa on a day with heavy thunderstorms. The OPP was shutting down the 401 in Toronto due to flooding. I was near the front of the group in my 4×4 when a cop knocked on my window. “Where are you headed?” “Ottawa.” He looks at my truck and says “You’ve got enough clearance so take it slow and stay in the middle. There might be sewer covers missing at the sides. Have a safe trip.” Off I went. Other than the massive backup in the other direction I could have been the last survivor of some apocalyptic event. It was awesome.
There’s pretty well none of these left around here or I would have another.
I still have an ’86. I generally refer to it as the D-21. (Hardbody means Swartzenager, to me). They are not as well built as contemporary Toyotas, by a long shot, but more fun to drive. Transmissions were the weak link. But they are rugged in a raggety American sense.
The previous 720s had the same chassis as the D-21s. I think the chassis also carried over to the Frontier (?).
The frame had bolted, not welded, cross members. Unique, I believe, in the mini truck field. This was an advantage in salt country. You could rebuild them.
Between a brilliant ad campaign, good styling, and the fact the D21’s are really durable little trucks, Nissan really hit a home run when they came out. The last generation Frontier (D40) has been basically unchanged from 2005 to 2017, a 12 year run, the first generation Titan remained basically the same for 11 years, 2004 to 2015. Nissan hangs on to a truck platform for a long time.
I’m annoyed that either people quit buying small trucks like this, or manufacturers quit making them. Or both.
For my needs, I don’t WANT a behemoth that resembles a junior semi truck.
If I could find a Hardbody or other similar small truck in decent shape, with 2 wheel drive and a manual trans, I’d be all over it for my next vehicle. Economical transportation and able to haul stuff.
I remember when these came out. They were/are an attractive truck in my mind. In the Balt/DC area they were everywhere but now I don’t think I have seen one (or the first generation Pathfinder) in years. This is sad as I see loads of Rangers, S10/S15 and Toyota pickups of that era still running around.
These were all over my HS parking lot in ’85-88. Many of them lowered with subwoofers and neon stripes…
A guy at my college had the generation before the Hardbodies that he had lowered and cut the top off so that it was a convertible. It had the airbrushed license plate on the front and matching purple/pink script on the tailgate – “Hot Thing.”
The owner was a character himself – chubby guy that was like a 20 year old version of Little Richard.
Unforgettable.
Welcome to the South, indeed…
I Think Engine Wise Nissan’s Z24 Engines Are Way Tougher than Toyota s 22Rs.Z24s Don’t Develope Timing chain& Head Gasket Problems Like 22Rs.Great Trucks.
Still very common around here, mostly still working for a living driven by landscapers and laborers. Our gardener used to drive one before graduating to a Frontier and now a 1st gen Tacoma; I gathered from him the Nissans were affordable and the Toyotas aspirational. I just returned from a week in Baja and saw plenty there also. Hard to believe they’re pushing 30 years old! I bought my first pickup in 1983, a used 1981 Datsun 720 4wd … perhaps the last year before the switch to Nissan branding in the US. It blew a head gasket and then the transmission countershaft (lost all gears but direct drive 4th) in under 100K miles, so in ’86 I started shopping for a new truck, and I decided I could afford new. I rejected Toyota right away because at the time I didn’t like the sloped hood styling; rejected the S10 and Jeep Comanche after finding the 2.8V6 a disappointment, and found the Mitsubishi and its Dodge sibling uninteresting. This narrowed it down to the Ford Ranger with its new 2.9 EFI V6, and the new Hardbody. I was leery about the Nissan after my previous experience, but what clinched it for Ford was that V6 4wd Hardbodies were unavailable. I can’t remember the details, but it wasn’t a shortage; they were delayed or pulled from sale temporarily for some reason, so I bought the Ranger, which was a fine truck. By the way, the adoption of the Hardbody moniker didn’t seem so odd then, as the previously used Lil’ Hustler nickname had also stuck with the earlier (420?) Datsun Pickup.
I haven’t seen one of these in the NW Ohio area for a couple of years, there was a blue one rotting away in front of a house I passed by on the way to work for over a decade, along with an old Grand Am in slightly better condition. One morning, both were gone, along with the people who lived there. I wondered if they took them with them, or did they get scrapped? Kind of like my much missed 2003 Ram 1500. I saw it all the time, sitting in front of a house with a boat trailer connected to it with the original tires still on it! I was about to put new ones on in 2007, when I traded it in after being badly hurt. One day about a year ago, it was gone. I want to ask the people in the house what happened to it. I hope it’s still running around.
https://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/662x539q90/922/BQKT1G.jpg
Amazing how far out-of-whack Nissan has gotten in the US. These trucks were tough as rocks but the rust monster has eaten most of them around here.
I have 2 landscapers/mowing guys who live on my street…one has a RAM 3500 cab and a half, the other has a stripped down RAM 1500 crew cab. Both pull utility trailers.
It’s nice that my FIL has a truck…I just borrow it when I need to haul something, return it washed with a full tank of gas and all is well with the world. I don’t have a burning desire to drive a truck every day.
What a difference between Cincinnati and California! I don’t think I’ve ever seen an independent landscaper with a Dodge or a Ram … maybe a few with ’74-’86 Chevies or older, and one with a Paul Niedermeyer-vintage F100. Otherwise, they all drive Toyota (mini, Tacoma or T100) or Nissan. Not even S10 or Ranger.
I had a 1978 Toyota SR5 short bed bought new in Columbus Ohio It was a nice basic truck. I sold it when it was 4 years old when rust bubbles appeared on the A pillars.
In late 1985 I bought a 1986 (First Year) Nissan Hardbody extended cab, 5 speed with AC. I kept it 12 years and it was never garaged. I only sold it because I moved to Fllorida in 1998. ( I only brought 3 cars) . It always had a bed liner which I took out ever few months and cleaned the bed. I washed in snowy weather at the coin-op car wash and paid attention to the underside. In 12 year s only a very little rust in the bed , and the silver paint still shone. A great vehicle.