Bear with me, this will take some time. But I want to place the Skyline in context, and scrape the surface of why it is so important in Japanese automotive culture – among gearheads anyway. This is Part 1 because this will take some doing; it’s because of the words more so than the pictures. There is so much ground to cover, so much which must regrettably be left out. And because the Skyline’s history seems to fall neatly into several sections.
Cedric makes a cameo appearance, too. Because he can.
Now, I’ve never owned a Nissan Skyline. They might seem to be a natural size and shape for me after the Cortina experience, but somehow, they were never on my radar. Probably because of the poor experience with the drivability of my uncle’s ’78 C210 -an L24E with early emission controls- and Nissan Australia’s reputation for poor assembly quality (Yes, they actually let us assemble Skylines here for a while). Then Nissan stopped selling them here altogether just as the really desirable models came out. Didn’t even import them – except for about 100 GTRs, perhaps 1000 of which remain. Gotta love used imports!
We’ve had so many articles about Skylines though. But what is it about this car? What is the mystique, the allure? As well as showing some of my model Skylines, I’ll try to explain what it’s all about, from my perspective anyway.
In one sentence though: They really were competition-bred.
S54: 1963-68
In Australia we were exposed to Japanese cars earlier than the US or Europe. By the mid-sixties, someone buying a new Nissan or Toyota here wouldn’t raise many eyebrows, except perhaps from returned servicemen and other folk unusually mindful of WW2. Already Japanese cars had a name for being keenly priced, well-built, and well-equipped. Better product than the British or the Europeans, at a better price, too! You can see where this is going…
But as well as the big names, we also had smaller players having a go at the Aussie market: Mitsubishi, Daihatsu, Isuzu, Hino, and… the Prince Motor Company. Who?
Briefly, Prince Jidosha Kogyo emerged from the Tachikawa Aircraft Company. They began building cars after the war with the Tama Electric. The first Skyline appeared as a rather overdecorated small sedan in 1957, with the much more European-looking S54 series in 1963.
Nissan took over the Prince company in 1966, but I can remember seeing the big Prince Gloria (beautiful cars) and the smaller Skyline (neat but unexceptional) here before then. The Skyline was roughly Toyota Corona/Datsun Bluebird size, and came with a 1500 pushrod four. The Gloria had an OHC six-cylinder version of the G-series engine. Prince engineers thought to put the Gloria’s two-litre six into the smaller car for racing.
Prince leads Porsche, Suzuka, 1964. Photo: Nissan Global
Prince engineers did a proper job of the conversion, lengthening the wheelbase 20cm and siting the six further back. This was the result, and in triple Weber form with 127hp from the G7 engine the car was a huge success on the track. Racing a sedan in GT-II against a 904 might seem odd to us, but Prince did – and beat the Porsche. You can argue the pros and cons of that win, but time would show it was no fluke. They’re still successful in historic racing today.
Yes, these early Skyline sixes are very narrow cars for their length, and the hood is notably longer than it is wide. The car looks disproportionate, stretched in front – because it was. Not too practical as a two-litre family sedan perhaps, being rather cramped inside– but look at it go! The Skyline mystique dates back to this model, the S54. Iconic.
C10: 1968-72
Prince engineers had a replacement model ready to go when Nissan took over the reins. The C10 became known as Hakosuka, a Japanese abbreviation for ‘box Skyline’. Once again, a huge racing success (because of Prince engineering, I’m tempted to say), and the range broadened to include a two-door hardtop.
The C10 series is slightly larger, and much better proportioned, being designed from the start to incorporate the six. Nicely detailed, too. It incorporates an unusual pressing on the rear door and quarter panel, the beginning of the famous ‘surf line’ which was to become an iconic Skyline design feature for several generations. But what was going on back here? Fender flares?
Yep, fender flares. It was at this point that the GT-R first appeared, and the Skyline mystique ramped up significantly. Despite the already larger body, the rear track was widened for racing, with black fender flares tacked on for a no-nonsense look. Under the hood sat a triple-Weber DOHC 24-valve S20 engine, another, different Prince design, good for 160hp. Racing success was assured. Sales success, too.
The GT-R also came as a sedan, but with flares incorporated in the body pressings. Tamer, but you knew it meant business.
For some reason we didn’t get this series in Australia. There was a hole in the Nissan range between the Datsun 1600 (510) we all know and love, and the big Datsun 2400 Super Six (no longer called Cedric here).
Marketing abhors a vacuum, so…
C110: 1972-77
Going from strength to strength, right? Well, no. There might have been something of a palace revolt in the boardroom at Nissan. It seems Nissan was still digesting Prince (it continued as a dealer chain). The next Skyline would be notably softened; they’d probably spin it as ‘for wider marketplace penetration’ or some such guff. While the package stayed the same, the styling seemed to be simpler but heavier, and overwrought -it didn’t have the athletic look of the previous generation. The surf line extrusion of the C10 turned into an odd concavity in the rear door/quarter pressing, which looked rather awkward at first, like someone had bashed in the door already.
You eventually got used to it; after that, the sedan wasn’t bad looking. The C110, or ‘Kenmeri’ to the Japanese (named for Ken and Mary in the TV ads), was quite popular down here as the Datsun 240K. There was a growing feeling that the Holden, Falcon and Valiant had grown too big, and that something a bit smaller was needed. Holden put their six into the Torana, and sales took off. Nissan remembered that the Prince company they’d bought out had done that five years earlier, and sent the Skyline back. But we didn’t know it was a Skyline by another name.
Just what Aussies needed.
They even sent us the two-door hardtop, unusually, as the 240K GT. Even more unusually, for Australia, it sold. But hang on – this was the period when Nissan styling really shot off at a tangent and seemed to take off for parts better left unknown! So, let’s just take another look at that rear view. And take another example, just in case…
Nope! It really is that shape. Look at the size of that C-pillar. I can see the effect the stylist was after, but what a visual obstruction! And so much visual mass so high up makes the car look almost unstable. It could have been so much sleeker. I’m told the wagon was even worse; it had no rear quarter window at all. Mercifully we were spared that one.
You may be wondering about the GT-R. Wonder no more.
This time both the front and rear fenders sprouted black flares, and the engine continued to be that mighty 24 valve Prince S20, not the weaker Nissan L-series the other Skylines used. But this iteration of the GT-R only lasted for one year, with 197 being built. Allegedly due to the oil crisis. Nissan pulled out of racing, so there was no point making the GT-R, they said. Hello guys? Ever heard of ‘Image’? Or ‘Halo car’? Guess not.
Nissan seemed to lose their mojo after this. Rather than doing the best they could, they seemed content merely to continue to field a product in each market segment. They seemed to lose that focused approach that marked the first glory years of the Skyline. Now I may be wrong; undoubtedly there were many thoroughly competent engineers in Nissan’s employ, but from the product we saw in Australia (120Y, 180B, 240K, 260C), the future -apart from the 240Z- did not look good.
Related CC Reading:
Curbside Classic: 1972 Nissan Skyline (C10) 2000 GT – Princely Presence
Curbside Classic: 1976 Nissan Skyline (C110) 2000 GT-X Coupé – Kenmari’s Botox Overdose
Woohoo! Awesome stuff, Pete!
Fully agree on the superiority of the S54 and C10 compared to the C110, though i have warmed up some to those (in 4-door form at least). Excellent Cedric coupé, too.
Thanks! I fast-forwarded this story after your comment last time, and part 2 is done. We’ll see how I go with part 3; there have been so many articles over the years about the R32/33/34 (many yours) and I don’t want to go over old ground. MIght just do a pictorial for them.
I was always fascinated by the C110’s styling. So neat, so right, but…. As a teenager I couldn’t figure out the rear door pressing – why would they do that? Then years later when I saw a C110, it made sense. They were carrying forward a distinctive styling feature from a car that had become iconic. Like they did later with the four round taillights.
I built that Cedric back when it was a new car. Oddly the kit is available again, from Doyusha, a company that seems to specialize in acquiring old tools and re-releasing them. If I was building this now I’d want to use narrower tyres and set the wheels inboard a bit – and I don’t know that I’d be quite so daring about the colour scheme.
Correction: second para – ‘Then years later when I saw a C10…’
Darned neuropathy!
Wonderful stuff, Pete, most informative, and most impressive how many of these you have owned (well, they’re all thoroughly good enough to pass for real to me!). Some car badges really are permanently saved, or boosted, or at least, recognizable, by early competition success. I think the Subaru with the WRX is another such, though I must say, I can’t think right now of a modern badge of the past twenty years that has benefitted thus. Looking forward to the next bits.
One very minor nit, the only Skyline ever made/assembled here was the R31 from ’86-’91. Those really were nice: good size, truly excellent seats, superb engine, very nice handling and ride, even with their styling by Nissan Shipping Containers. We had one in the family, when we also found they were easy for the Mafia to blow up in my sister’s driveway (because of displeasure about her daughter refusing the sleazy advances of her horrid little boss at the local pizza house), but that’s a story, albeit entirely true, for another time.
Thanks Justy. For a while there it looked as though Evolution was doing the same for Mitsubishi, but then they seemed to fall asleep at the wheel. I’m sure the CC commentariat will think up some other examples. Maybe among the European marques?
About local Skyline assembly, you’re quite right. What I meant to say was that the quality (and styling) of what Nissan did assemble here would have put me off considering Nissan as a brand, even though the Skyline was fully-imported (weird expression, that) until the R31, and presumably of typical impeccable Japanese quality. It just wouldn’t have occurred to me as a car I might want to buy. Illogical maybe, but that’s how the mind works. Sometimes.
Excellent stuff Pete, and even better being illustrated with your own stock. I think I’m all in with a season ticket to any of the Skylines (a true fan supports their team even in “off” seasons).
Here’s an early Skyline 2000GT belonging to a long-time mechanic named Hiroshi, whose shop I just randomly decided to walk into and attempt to speak with a few years back in a Tokyo back alley after seeing some delectable treasures through the open door…
Thanks Jim. Skylines are a car I can write enthusastically about, even if I’ve never owned one. You’ll find in the next part that my lack of enthusiasm for certain models comes through: I hope that doesn’t disqualify me. But I try to be fair.
I remember when the S54 came out here with the six I was stunned. Okay I was just a kid, but I was like ‘They put a six in this?’. Dad felt a car that size was too small to need six cylinders, and they were small, as you know. But once I saw them at the track (on TV), their performance was astonishing. Prince was really onto something, then Nissan came along and basked in the glory.
Impeccable efforts Peter!
Wonderful brand examples, and build quality. Colours are excellent.
And the poses are really attractive.
As always, I love your work!
Thank you Daniel. The poses are just instinctive. For most of these early Skylines I went with either factory colours or ones that were era-appropriate, like the ’66 Chevy blue on the C10. The major exception is the Cedric. Dark green/yellow-green top with an olive interior was inspired by a magazine photo of a JDM car which may or may not have been a Nissan, recalled from memory a year or two later, as a teenager.
The blue C110 with the open door is my tribute to one I saw wrecked as a teenager, rolled, with the passengers crawling out, and the driver screaming “Oh my beautiful car!” I didn’t see how it happened, but I heard the crumple of metal; the car can have been only a year old at the time. Things like that stick with you.
Two things:
1. When doing my typical opening-glance scroll of the home page, I thought the hook photo was an image of an actual Skyline, parked in a museum or something. Only when I scrolled back up for closer looks at the day’s topics did I realize it was a post by the esteemed Mr. Wilding. Soooooo…maybe not a real car. Had me totally fooled.
2. Your work is always impressive, but you’ve knocked it out of the park with the GTs and GT-Rs (especially) here.
As ever, grateful for a very enjoyable post!
And thank you, F-85.
That first one, the S54; I’m glad it looks so real. Fujimi made an excellent kit, with so much of the chrome trim as separate parts. The result in this case was added realism, but the trim pieces were so fine they made assembly more of a challenge. How I didn’t break any of those side chrome strips, or the one atop the rear fender I’ll never know. Not for a beginner!
Early Skylines are rare here later models were like fleas on a mangy dog when I returned from OZ yep used imports flooded the NZ roads, 90s models are disappearing now boy racers got hold of them and usually modified them to make them handle using the trendy junk peddled by dodgy speed shops most ended up in a tree or light pole,
The C110s, C210s and R30s disappeared from the roads years ago, and I’m not seeing as many of the R32-3-4s around either these days. Still one or two in my town. I think.
The wheels on the green car are really fantastic. Inspiring work as always. Thank you once again for sharing, I really enjoy seeing your models.
Thanks. (I’m assuming you mean the C110 not the Cedric). That’s a kit I got in a job lot from a friend in the US pre-Covid. They’re not what the instructions called for, but they suit really well – similar to Nissan’s styled steel wheels of the period but not quite identical. Lovely satin chrome plating, just had to add the grey highlights.
Plenty more to come!
For me it was inexplicable that the C10 was not sold in Australia. There was a obvious gap in the range between the 1600/510 and the 240C/Cedric. When I saw an imported sedan in the metal only a few years ago, I thought it was so right sized for our market. A little smaller than the Fords and Holden and Chryslers, more technically sophisticated and definitely to me, more attractive.
A handful of countries in Northern Europe got it as the Datsun 2400.
Exactly. Nissan made some strange product decisions at times. The C10 would have been ideal – they could have beaten Holden to the small six cylinder market.
Like F-85 above, I also thought the Skyline was a real car in a warehouse or some such place, it even has the vertical seams in the sills that, a Google search confirmed, the real car has, Great work !
I remember the 240K as a teenager, I thought it was almost good looking, but what I now know as the surf line just made it look awkward. Of course I didn’t know the history behind it. It makes more sense to me now.
Thanks jonco. I can’t claim credit for the sill seams, the kit came with them. Which just shows the lengths Fujimi went to for an accurate kit. Time and again while building it I was struck by the level of detail they’d gone into, much more so than in most of their kits.
That surf line thing, yeah. Looking back at the original S54 you can kinda-sorta see it on that rear fender, and the way it looks on the C10 definitely gives off a Mopar vibe, though as we’ll see it went strange on the C210 before disappearing for a time. While it lasted, it did make the Skyline distinctive.
Yes I forgot to mention the small 6 cylinder market. They would have beaten Holden, Ford, Chrysler (Centura) and Toyota (2nd gen Corona Mk2, although the Crown was sort of small anyway).
It was great that we got the 240K and the fact they were relatively common back in the day vindicates my opinion that the C10 would also have done well here. But the 240K was not as attractive, even if it did not suffer the worst of 1970s Nissan styling efforts.
Slight off topic, incredibly stupid how the 1600 SSS was not offered here, at the height of the performance car era. And yet some European left hand drive countries that were at the time a smaller market for Datsun/Nissan than Australia received it. Go figure.
The position of the Crown was…. interesting. I knew several people who had one as their regular family car, and once inside the narrowness didn’t really seem obvious, so long as you didn’t try sitting three-abreast – but in all honesty, how often do people do that? They just seemed a sensibly-sized family sedan, until the early seventies when price rises made them uncompetitive.
It often catches folk out, how close in size (to Western eyes) the various ‘size classes’ of Japanese cars can be. An early-seventies four cylinder Skyline with the short nose was awfully close to Bluebird-size, and a six-cylinder Bluebird with the long nose (think first Maxima) was very close to a Skyline; yet they seem to have had quite distinct market positions.
I’ll echo the comments above: fantastic stuff Peter! Big Skyline fan here, and still miss my R33. First time I saw a 240K coupe in the metal it was love at first sight for me – even though the C-Pillar is quite enormous, it seems lithe-looking next to the Butaketsu rear of its stablemate, the C130 Laurel hardtop. In the right colour and with the right wheels a lowered 240K coupe can look better than a flared GTR.
Having said that, the ’70s’ part of my 60s-90s screen-top Skylines is C130 as I haven’t yet found a suitable C110!
Thanks Scott! I quite agree that a regular 240K GT can look better than a GTR. They were quite a looker when moving in traffic, it was only when stationary that you got the full effect of that huge pillar and consequent heavy rear.
That’s quite the collection atop your screen. Here’s my Butaketsu, a 1/24 from about fifty years ago. Some Japanese modellers say that the proportions aren’t quite right, and make extensive changes, the likes of which are just beyond me.
R33? Coming up in Part 3. 🙂
I have a bit of an obsession with the Hakosuka Skyline – to my eyes it has about the more perfect proportions a car can have. Obviously I developed this appreciation of the car far too late to be able to import one affordably (seriously dude, what were you doing in 1995? High school? Pfft, whatever!) So in 2019 I ordered the complete Hachette/Kyosho weekly build1:5 scale kit.
Here it is along all the other scales I have of the car in a photo taken in 2020, just after I finished it. It is far from perfect but stands as the largest scale model in my collection and I had to buy a glass coffee table to be able to display it.
Sorry, mistyped, it is 1:8th scale.
That is quite the collection of Hakosukas!
I’ve never built anything in 1/8, though I do have a 1/8 Jaguar E-type, an old Bandai kit that is incredibly detailed, much more so than the common Monogram one. Perhaps I should build it while these fingers are still relatively nimble. I’m not surprised you had to buy a table to display it!
A fun history tidbit is that half of Prince was Fuji Precision Industries, a little brother to Fuji Heavy Industries after the post WWII breakup of aviation powerhouse Nakajima. This makes the Nissan Skyline GT-R and the Subaru Impreza WRX cousins. Nissan also got plane maker turned micro car builder Aichi as part of MITI’s consolidation drive in the 60s.
Thanks for adding that, Joe. Yes, I turned up that connection too while I was researching, but omitted it in the interest of overall readibility, as the origin of Prince seems quite convoluted and I’m not sure I understood it all. Interesting too when you think of the holding Toyota has in Subaru nowadays.