The ancient Chinese saying “A journey of ten thousand li starts with a single step” was never truer than with the big Nissans. Today, they’re usually called Infiniti and have gone global, but at the very start, they were called Cedric and looked like an Eastern European reinterpretation of a Checker. But it’s not about the car, it’s about the step.
To be entirely frank, this particular car is not the very first step – it’s the facelifted version of it. And it was a pretty extensive facelift, to say the least. Not to mention the extra wheelbase on this Custom trimmed car. But let’s proceed in order and rewind a few years, for the story of the first big Nissan is worth a little trip to the mid-’50s.
The year is 1955 and Nissan just started assembling the Austin A50 Cambridge under license. It was a unit body car with a reasonably modern 1.5 litre OHV engine, the famous B-Series. And unlike most domestically-produced “big” cars (i.e. between 500 and 1500cc) of the time, it had IFS and a four-speed gearbox. Production became 100% domestic by 1956 and carried on until early 1960.
Nissan took this time to work on the Cedric, which had virtually none of the Cambridge in it when it replaced it at the top of the range in April 1960. The looks were quite different, of course. A distinctly American tinge was applied quite liberally, minus the dimensions – more Vauxhall than Austin. The Nash-esque stacked quads were an odd choice, making the Cedric 30 look narrower than it otherwise would have. It was a unit body car though – a Japanese market first for this type of higher end model. This was the Cambridge’s main legacy, as Nissan engineers did learn a lot from the English car’s monocoque construction.
It is well known that Nissan adopted and refined the Austin B-Series engine (dubbing it the Nissan C-Series), but those were initially smaller (1 litre) and used in the Bluebird. The first Cedric 30s received the new Nissan 1500cc 4-cyl., a.k.a the G engine, good for 70hp. Regulatory changes meant that larger blocks were allowed and Nissan had a 1883cc 4-cyl. (83hp) ready for service. It was fitted to the Cedric Custom, which had an extra 10cm between the wheels and appeared in late 1960. Wagon and van variants, for their parts, were launched at the 1961 Tokyo Motor Show.
In late 1962, the Cedric got a facelift so drastic that it even changed its model number to 31. The nose was noticeably longer and the quads were placed horizontally – a pretty big improvement. The taillights got a little bigger too. But the real novelty was the Special, which featured an extra 20cm of legroom and a 2.6 litre six – a JDM first, both in terms of capacity and number of cylinders.
Very few people could afford Specials though, so Nissan used the same ultra-LWB body, but fitted with the 1.9 litre 4-cyl., for the Custom – a.k.a our feature car. Standard (er… I mean “Standrad”?) Cedrics with the 1.5 also remained available, including some delivered for taxi service with a 2.1 litre Diesel. The Cedric 31 carried on until October 1965, getting minor trim changes on a yearly basis.
But as the mid-‘60s approached, the Nissan started to look pretty dated, especially compared to its increasingly numerous domestic competitors. Isuzu missed the mark with their Bellel (top left), but eternal rival Toyota’s second generation Crown (top right), from 1962 onward, proved a formidable opponent – as did the Prince Gloria (bottom right), from ’62 also. In 1964, the superbly designed Mitsubishi Debonair (bottom left) further compounded the issue.
Against this renewed, stylish (for some) and growing opposition, the Cedric had to make do with a late ‘50s-style panoramic windshield, a rather upright body and a pointy rear end. Now up to 88hp, the 1.9 litre 4-cyl. (mated to a 3-speed manual or an optional automatic) was decent enough, but certainly no longer in the same league as Toyota and Prince, who fielded 2-litre sixes.
The first to fall victim to this increasingly difficult state of affairs was the 1.5 litre Standard, which was dropped after 1964. However, the LWB variants like our Custom here were still very competitive in the legroom department, dated styling aside: nothing made in Japan at the time could really compare, save for the (far more expensive and not quite as roomy) 1964-67 Toyota Crown Eight.
I see a bit of Checker Marathon in the Cedric 31’s profile. In a parallel universe, Nissan kept a Diesel version of this design going until the early ‘80s, albeit without the poor Checker’s gigantic 5mph bumpers, for taxi service. Just like they did with the Cedric Y31 a few decades later.
It’s interesting that Nissan opted for this twin round dial design for the instrument binnacle, given the propensity for horizontal gauges at the time. The super-deluxe Special got those – as well as a lot of wood veneer that looks a little over the top. The simplicity of this Custom’s dash is far more agreeable. But the real attention-getter was at the back of the cabin.
Standard wheelbase cars made do with 253cm (99.5 inches) and were not exactly spacious, but good enough for a 1960 Japanese product. This Custom’s extra 30.5cm (12 inches) really changed things for the back seat occupants and kept the Cedric in the game. Nissan would revisit the idea of a LWB Cedric with the Y31 in the late ‘80s, but when this model went out of production in 1965, the real replacement was the President – another important step, given it had a V8 and its own platform.
Generation one Cedrics were exported, though it’s unclear exactly where, how many and how well they fared. There was a Yue Long version in Taiwan; some apparently went to Australia, where they failed to make much of an impact (unlike the Bluebird), save for the name, which was widely ridiculed. It’s unlikely that the LWB variants were shipped over in any quantity (if at all) though. It did not matter much, as Nissan were aiming this Cedric at the JDM anyway, and it sold pretty well here: just under 145,000 units were made in five years. It was an encouraging result, given that Toyota had made over 150,000 of the 1st generation Crown, but over seven years.
The first modern Japanese effort in the executive car class was the aforementioned 1955-62 Toyota Crown RS, followed in 1959 by the first generation Prince Gloria. But both cars were somewhat based on previously existing models (the Super and the Skyline, respectively), whereas Nissan’s approach, informed though it was by their formative Austin experience, was to go for a clean-sheet design and to stretch it beyond the limits that had been set by the famously rigid Japanese bureaucracy.
Not content with ushering all these advances, the Cedric was also the first car marketed by its maker under its own name. There is not a single mention of Datsun anywhere on this thing, unlike the Bluebirds and Fairladys they shared the showroom floor with. That was probably not the case for export models, but it was another key step in Nissan’s long and sometimes confusing history. The slow and messy process of erasing the Datsun marque started here, back in 1960. It only took another 30 years. The Cedric nameplate, for its part, carried on for ten generations, only disappearing completely in 2014 when Nissan got out of the taxi business.
A moment of hushed silence please, ladies and gents, for the first-generation Cedric. A big car for some, but a giant leap for Nissan.
Related post:
Curbside Classic. 1965 Nissan Cedric Wagon., by Don Andreina
Vauxhall Victor FA in the Nissan’s greenhouse, with less chrome, but the Vauxhall was probably a scaled down version of the previous year’s Pontiac.
My disturbed eyes see the original rear engined Skoda MB1000 in the appearance of the Cedric from the B pillar backwards.
That really would be a parallel dimension if a Skoda had seen the newly introduced Cedric in 1960 and thought ‘That’s the look’.
In Australia, the Cedric in the early 1960s didn’t make a big impact on the sales charts but there was an industry joke which for years circulated. It recounted an exchange between a local journalist and a visiting Nissan executive, said to have happened at the product launch.
Australian journalist: Do you think there’ll be any resistance to the name?
Japanese executive: Why would that be?
Australian journalist: Well, because of what Cedric means here.
Japanese executive: Ah, what does Cedric mean here?
Australian journalist: Well, you know, a bit of a homosexual.
Japanese executive: Ah, you have many homosexuals in Australia?
Australian journalist: Well yes, quite a few actually.
Japanese executive: Good, we will sell many motor cars.
Unfortunately, the story is thought apocryphal.
Well, you have to start somewhere, right? It isn’t what I’d consider impressive. What happened to Nissan is, however, impressive. There were moments when the Cedric looked more appealing to me, but then, loses that appeal within the next model cycle. That is still how I view Nissan today. There were years when they presented terrific appealing vehicles, followed by – uh – “what-it-that?” years. I struggle to see a consistent style language for Nissan over the years. Even today. I don’t find their vehicles visually appealing, although they certainly were before. Is that being “cutting edge”? Mmm, maybe – but wouldn’t that mean their earlier designs would appear attractive today? That’s not happening.
Toyota makes needed driving appliances. Subaru makes solid quirky cars. Mazda makes beautiful cars. Honda makes cars for Boomer’s. However, Nissan seems to be what you drive if you can’t get your first choice. While the market is large enough to have buyers for this company, I just cannot find a compelling reason to consider anything they offer. To me, all Nissans are Cedrics.
Stately looking. ((in a “1958-59” sort a way)). The yellow one in the pic (midway in the article) looks less severe.
When we did the CC meet in Nashville in 2016, a basement area of the Land Motor Museum had a collection of historic Nissan/Datsun cars and trucks that were (as I recall it) maintained by the corporation, whose US presence has its HQ in that city.
Among the cars was a ratty, unrestored Cedric Deluxe of this generation. It was a left hand drive car, so it was certainly an export to somewhere – perhaps even here in the US. It was the first time I had ever seen one, but it was crammed in with several other cars and I didn’t get any really good photos of it.
Austin didnt let Nissan have access to their entire range of cars or they would have cloned the A90-105 range of bodies for a bigger cars, the styling was the same as the 4 bangers they did build as Datsuns but the size was up there with the Cedric
It’s interesting that the Nissan A50 pictured in the ad has chrome side trim Austin never used on their cars; a variant of this trim was used on the larger A90 and 105. I guess Nissan thought the car as designed by Austin was a bit drab (which it was).
I remember seeing these 31-series Nissans as a kid. They seemed to avoid the awkwardness that so often resulted when adopting American styling to a smaller car. I’m not sure which model we got here in Australia, but they looked quite upmarket, pretty sure it had those gold-tone badges. Toyota’s Crown seemed more common though.
Absolutely, has a Checker feel. Impressed by the large size, and high placement, of the taillights. Thoughtful consideration of safety for 1963.
This black Custom looks great to me .
I think I’d rather have the slightly smaller Cedric 1500 Standrad .
-Nate
I noticed this is a very large vehicle. The Chinese Shanghai SH760A grill looks very similar to its grill. But Chinese seems aim higher, the original Shanghai SH760 was developed based on Mercedes W108. So Shanghai was more advanced than this generation of Cedric
We had the odd Cedric in New Guinea, as well as Princes. A slot car set that Dad bought for my sister and I had a Crown and Cedric.
I chose the Cedric. Perhaps even at 8 I disliked Toyotas.