I’ve written them up before, starting almost ten years ago, but there are some five Datsun 710 wagons in town, and three of them are this color and are still in daily use in Eugene. Because there’s so (relatively) many of them, it’s like I see one one just about every day or so. It’s crazy; like some weird dream. Pale turquoise 710 wagons…they’re following me…there’s another one…is it a conspiracy of some sort?
I’ll give you links to all of them below:
Datsun 710 Wagons Number One through Three
Now watch another one appear.
Totally love Datsuns of the 70’s. Styling and all. I think that’s a time when all three asian brands were equally reliable. And equally rusty. Not sure when it occurred… Maybe late 80’s when Nissan quality went sub par to what we’re used to with Japanese brands to this day. A murano I had for 6 months was the pits.
I have the original hub cap from one of these (a ’77) hanging in my back porch .
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I bought some for my ’78 Datsun PL620 pickup truck when I had it .
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I remember these as being very good cars, way out of my budget .
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-Nate
The original 510s are making a comeback !! Word got around that they’re a “poor man’s BMW “. so they’re a collectors item. Just down the street here in Portland, someone has a nice 70 Datsun pickup.
I owned a ’74 Datsun 710 4 door sedan; they didn’t offer the wagon till later (I still have the brochure “Wabash Cannonball” which shows the 2 and 4 door sedans and a coupe in 1974. It had the new “seatbelt” sensor which wouldn’t allow the car to start unless the seatbelt was buckled. It was a good car, lasted me through 4 years of undergraduate studies plus another year when I hit some black ice on I89 and after getting it repaired, decided I needed something other than a light weight rwd car for the winter and replaced it with a ’78 Scirocco. The car was also getting pretty rusty by then, despite having it “rustproofed” when new. This was my last non-VW (for the last 36 years) and my last non-manual car.
The automatic choke on the car kept the revs too high when the car was cold, making
it necessary to shift into neutral at stoplights until it warmed up otherwise the rear end would fishtail if on a low friction (snowy or icy) surface….my sister borrowed the car to take to her job, and once I had to go pick her up (in another car) when she forgot that I had told her to shift into neutral at lights and she freaked out thinking she couldn’t control the car at stops. Guess I should have done something about the choke, but never did…the car was pretty reliable, didn’t start only 1 week during blizzard of ’78, only problems I remember having were when alternator went out, and also had a coolant hose burst. I learned how to do “conventional” tune up on this car, changing points and condensor, setting dwell and timing. My dear departed father had bought me a Sears toolkit (which I still have) which served me well working on cars starting with the 710.
I remember I had no problem selling the car in 1981, small cars were selling well, so despite the rust, the car got quite a bit of interest…I remember some trim falling off the car during the test drive (probably body side moulding) and the person didn’t seem to care, still bought the car after what I thought was a bad test drive experience.
Wow, these haven’t roamed the streets of Rhode Island for what, at least 25 years or so? And for there to be several roaming the streets of Portland is a testament to milder weather and not using salt and other harsh chemicals on the roads. So cool to see older cars that vanished on one coast to be still daily drivers on the other!
Eugene, not Portland. There might well be 15 of these in Portland for all I know. 🙂
’70’s Datsuns really were weird and wonderful creatures. I remember disliking most of the their styling at the time, but compared to the squared-off generic econobox styling that it evolved into after the changeover to FWD these are so much more expressive. I love seeing them still in daily use somewhere, but as stated before, they’re long gone and recycled into refrigerators here on the East Coast.
Agreed about 1970s Datsuns. But they’re not quite ALL gone for the East Coast. Early this winter, I saw a ’77 200-SX… was able to get pictures of it, and am writing the CC now.
But other than that one, I haven’t seen a ’70s Datsun in about a decade. There may be five 710s in Eugene, but there’s probably not that many in all of Virginia.
In my 1000 mile trek around the norther Greecian mainland last summer, I noted that they have a surprising number of these and the same-era Datsun pick ups still on the road.
The popularity of the Violet 160J / 710 series in Greece is likely due to one being the outright winner of the 1976 Acropolis rally.
Not 710’s because they weren’t sold here, but I’ve seen a few 120Y’s (B210) in the last couple of weeks including one wagon.
It is surprising that there are that many of them in that color, I can’t imagine the take rate was that high. When I think of 70’s Datsuns I think of Orange, Mustard Yellow and Red as the colors I remember being common.