I realize that aesthetics is a touchy and highly subjective matter, but if we’re ever going to collectively agree on one thing about car styling, let it be that Nissan designed and produced some of the most atrocious cars of the ‘70s, that most questionable of decades. Everyone in favour, show of hands?
Motion carried, I presume. Let the record show that CC has ruled unanimously that Datsun’s mid-‘70s creations were pig-ugly. Sure, there were certain contemporaries with some highly questionable output too – AMC, Renault or British Leyland, for instance – but even they were a mixed bag. Observing Datsun’s entire ‘70s lineup, however, is a bit like seeing a large number of tarantulas, scorpions and snakes crawling everywhere, and wondering which one is the least poisonous.
Here’s a little sampler of this Delirium Datsun, in case you forgot. I’m not going to put every single variant of every platform Datsun were making back then, but you get the idea. And no, I’m not cherry-picking. Other than I did pick the Cherry F10, because, well, just look at that thing. Ugh! At least, Datsun were equal opportunity offenders: their high-end cars looked just as misshapen as their econoboxes.
So let’s examine our 120Y specimen. These were also known as “Sunny” in Europe and “210” in America, for some reason. That was another trait of period Datsuns: the nameplates changed according to where they were sold. None of that Mercedes or Peugeot nonsense of using the same three-number code everywhere. Datsun preferred a combination of obscure alphanumerics (100A, 120Y, 240K…) and inappropriate names (Cherry, Cedric, Silvia…), depending on which market was targeted.
It’s quite true that Datsun were far from the only company to do this kind of thing: British Leyland and General Motors (to name but two) were past masters at these little games. Only BL and GM had multitudes of marques to play with, so the nameplate variants were often coupled with badge-engineering, which made a little more sense than what Datsun/Nissan were playing at.
Never mind the names then, what about the car? The Datsun 120Y was born on a dark night in May 1973. A range of variants were soon proposed: 2- and 4-door saloons, coupé, 3- and 5-door wagons and delivery vans – pretty much everything but convertibles, which were becoming rare in Japan and the US in those years. The secret to the 120Y’s success – and it was quite a successful model) – had more to do with value for money and solidity than anything else. The 1.3 litre Nissan A-Series 4-cyl. engine that these cars had were widely produced and bulletproof. The car’s traditional RWD/live axle layout, though already dated by 1973, was still broadly acceptable and provided adequate comfort on good roads, while making bad roads passable. And the whole car’s build quality and finish were usually top of its category.
In the Japanese tradition, there were also a lot of standard features for a very reasonable amount of money. Compared to many of their European competitors, the Datsuns were chock full of goodies and controls all over their strangely designed dash. At least, the inside of this car is in complete unison with the exterior. Love the billiard ball shifter knob on this heavily modified version, though.
Datsun sold these for five years and folks who had more sense than sensibility went ahead and bought them. Solid cars, nicely appointed – what’s not to like? Well, this angle, for instance. There’s lots I find unlovable here. What were they channeling, some sort of Mustang on diet pills, or a Dodge Dart with a bad case of conjunctivitis?
Not that things get that much better out back. At this angle, the 120Y is not a million miles from the Toyota “Kujira” Crown, but the Crown had more identity and quite a bit more width, which ends up making a world of difference. Then again, it’s unfair (and ungentlemanly) to judge anything by its rear end.
The biggest problem is the Datsun’s profile, full of creases, slopes, broken lines and changes of direction, and signifying nothing. This hodgepodge of a design makes the fender line climb way up into the C-pillar, then loses it abruptly to come back down to the taillamps. It makes the whole car look like it’s a sad sagging structure, hinged or hanging from on the C-pillar. The overall effect is that everything back of the B-pillar looks completely out of kilter. With that bulging mass of metal over the rear wheel and a stubby, pointy rear end, it’s as if the 120Y had been rear-ended by a steam locomotive. You can almost see the cow-catcher pushing under the car, giving it that high rump. It looks bad, plus it’s derivative.
Everyone is influenced by everyone else, of course. But the 120Y’s mini-Detroit look really hinges on that bulging behind and fat C-pillar. One can see some 1971-75 Kujira in there, but it’s quite lithe by comparison; the Crown’s more linear and imposing looks also help. And it’s not just Detroitesque Japanese cars. There were others, such as the Renault 12 (1969-80), with some of that fat C-pillar / droopy-boot style as well – so it was definitely in the atmosphere. But the larger Toyota and the airier R12 make the design work far more successfully than the Datsun.
Perhaps the most jarring line on the whole car is that crease on the lower half of the body. That thing makes no earthly sense. Starting at a seemingly random point of the front wheel opening, it lazily goes down to the rear wheel at a shallow angle, then reappears after the rear wheels, but jutting upwards. This draws the eye even more towards the C-pillar area and increases the sagginess of the whole look.
The two little vent-like dents at the rear seem to be an homage to the (real) vents on the 1969-74 Iso Lele, just to give the 120Y a touch of faux-Italian to go with the faux-Detroit. In fact, it looks like the Iso’s rear end was pretty much what the Datsun designers were aiming for. Picking a good car to emulate is also crucial, though. With all due respect to the Iso Lele, it’s hardly the best-looking Italian car of the era…
And no, the rant is still not over: were have to go back to that front end. This is a series 1 car; the series 2 came out in early 1976 with a revised grille that was marginally less atrocious. This is another case of how little touches like vents and grilles can imprint character on a car. In this case, I’m not sure what these vents, which are sitting on the grille, are in aid of.
I think what happened here is that the Datsun designers saw the 1965-69 Mustang – probably alongside a Fuselage Mopar or two – and tried mixing both, while trying to make it all fit the narrower 120Y. The Ford looks great in part because it doesn’t over-highlight its styling touches. Those faux louvres between the grille and the headlamps are small and discreet, painted in body colour. Datsun’s version is way too complicated, gimmicky and plasticky to be anything but an eyesore.
Using Detroit’s design language at a time when American cars were hitting peak land yacht was not the wisest move. The ‘60s Japanese designs, which were more Italian-tinged, obviously worked a lot better for smaller cars. After that, perhaps because of the budding American import boom, most Japanese cars turned to a more trans-Pacific style and the world was all the uglier for it. Let’s count our blessings, though: the feature car is the Asian version of the 120Y, which doesn’t have the North American rubber bumpers. At least, there are no distracting protrusions to hinder our appreciation of this Datsun’s peculiar looks.
Deficient aesthetics should not overshadow this car’s importance in Nissan’s long history. Ugly though they were, these cars were impossible to kill and were quite popular. The 120Y helped Datsun conquer even more market share across the world. As a machine for transporting passengers and cargo, it was nothing short of brilliant. Pity blind folks don’t drive.
Related posts:
Curbside Classic: Datsun 120Y/B210/Sunny – Reliable. Well-Built. Ugly., by WS
Curbside Classic: Datsun B210 – Bit•O•Honey, by PN
The Atomic cockroaches still plenty 120&140Ys are on the road here indestructible indeed God bless Japanese for making long lasting stuffs
+1 on the cockroach thing. Melbourne is lousy with them.
They’re long gone from areas that use road salt, though. A rare sight by the end of the ’80s.
Ahhhh… just when T87 captures my heart forevermore, he renders it asunder with his denigration of the Cedric wagon. For shame.
And for the record, around this time Nissan was producing some of the best looking cars on earth including the 230/330 Cedrics and the non-van versions of this…
Really, the Skyline Japan and Kenmeri wagons would’ve looked ok if they’d had conventional big rear-quarter windows.
Exactly
Oh my; that is delicious. I was never exposed to these big Nissans in the flesh back in the day to develop a proper appreciation, but I’m somewhat of a contrarian in this whole period of their styling, and rather like it. Including the little 120Y/B210. Leave it to the Germans to make clean little boxes; it was getting a bit boring. This new styling direction was anything but that.
I was exposed to the Silvia here. I haven’t been quite as kind to as I should have it in my CC on it here, but it keeps growing on me.
That nose is very Dodge Challengeresque, I love it!
Also proof that surface flaming was not invented by Chris Bangle, although this actually looks nice.
I’ve told youse before, Andreina, them 330 Cedrics is not pleasant to the eye, and now I have T-87 to prove it!
No worse than modern jelly moulds with gunslit windows,
Now we know would be a Maverick with Escort / Corcel proportions. But I still think that Tiida and Note are even more atrocious than that 120Y in its style.
The Sunny was very popular in the 70s here in the UK. Unlike the car in your pictures the Sunnys sold here here rusted away very quickly. If not the worst new car for rust on UK roads at the time it was in the Top 10.
The next generation of Sunny threw off the bizarre styling leaving just a few odd details.
I wonder how well Datsuns such as these stacked up against the AMC Hornet of the period? Both were regarded as outsiders by John Q. Public and both provided a very good value relative to the dollars spent. Of course, styling is highly subjective, but I fail to see how that would seriously skew things.
I grew up next door to Kenosha, so my opinion may be a little skewed, but… in my corner of the Midwest the Hornets outsold these Datsuns by a wide margin. You’d have to go to Milwaukee (if not Chicago) to buy a Datsun, and then you may have trouble getting it serviced if you lived in a rural area. As far as style, both cars were “anti-big-3” choices, but the Datsun was seen as just “weird”, whereas the Hornet was for people who just wanted transportation, and didn’t care at all what it looked like. The Datsun would have gotten way better MPG, and I’d bet would have been more fun to drive, (was AMC still using the trunion front end this late in the game?) but the Hornet would be seen as being more solid and definitely have a better heater (very important in Wisconsin winters! None of my friends in the 80’s with their hand-me-down imports had good heaters, especially since their cars were usually more hole than car by then) I had a neighbor who moved to our town with a Datsun of this era (a B-210) and they replaced it pretty quickly with an American car, and left the Datsun next to their garage. All the neighborhood kids “played car” in it, and I remember the floors had big holes in them, and the car was definitely less than 10 years old at the time. Japanese cars were seen as “robust engine, always starts no matter the weather, but ferocious rusters” to the point that I never saw the classic 510-series cars in the flesh until car shows in the ‘00s- they were completely gone before I ever saw any. Everything rusted where I grew up, but Japanese cars seemed to last 50% less than anything else back then. My personal ‘81 Honda (that I got in 1990) was already pretty well rusted out when I bought it… these Datsuns lasted 5-6 years at best.
Show of hands? More likely, show of stomach contents…some real weird stuff…thankfully the cars were made out of pressed TP, which was quite fitting after a couple of years of salt exposure, as they could flush themselves…
Stomach contents… Lol 😅
A ghastly looking car which made the predecessor 1200 look like a treasure. Even the exhaust note on these was horrible.
In Australian, there was a joke: Datsun 120Y –
Y did they make it?
Almost all of the export 1970s Datsuns were fugly except the Z car and the Skylines. But thete wee done decent looking JDM models like the Laurel from the early 1970s.
Nissan’s current offerings are styling excrement (the person responsible for the Juke should be tortured) and just about all Toyotas of recent times have adopted their philosophy.
One advantage of the US models’ big bumpers is they forced the relocation of the turn signals to the grille just inboard of the headlights, forcing the deletion of one set of fake vents anyway
I can’t concur with your opinion on the Renault 12 looking better, though. The R12 always looked to me as though it was designed as a wagon first, and the sedan was then done with a couple of flourishing whacks with a sword to a quarter-scale clay model.
I was just getting into cars in the 70’s and a family friend had a 2-door B210 so I remember these well.
I find that the photographed model, being a 4-door without the massive C-pillar but with the addition of nice wheels and a bit more lift in the rear, doesn’t seem nearly as ugly as the ones I remember from my youth. I’d almost consider one for my “infinite money and space” garage.
I remember thinking that the Datsun 1200 from the early 1970s was a good-looking small car. We drove from Pennsylvania to Florida (Disney World) in 1973, and they were fairly common down there at the time. The coupe, in particular, was handsome.
When the B-210 debuted, it left me scratching my head. It looked very strange – even for a Japanese car.
The F-10 was even stranger. There was actually an F-10 hatchback in our neighborhood. It was driven by a college professor and his wife. They had previously owned a Citroen DS station wagon, so the F-10 probably didn’t seem too strange to them!
While I can’t think of a mainstream car company that had an odder-looking range of products in the 1970s, I generally liked Datsuns’ interiors. Very modern-looking… in a good way. With some of these cars, I wonder if the interior and exterior design teams ever spoke to each other.
And I, for one, actually liked Nissan’s 1970s names. Yes, they’re at best tangential to the product, but Sunny, Bluebird, Laurel, etc. were creative and memorable.
back in 1987 I was only 15 my father bought me a 79 Datsun 120Y I my first car ever I learned driving in it !!
You build a strong case for the prosecution that Datsun’s were pretty fugly in the ’70s. However, not all their products were that terrible. The mid 70s 510 was a cute car, prim and proper, fit into most parking spots, and was unobtrusive. The 240Z was one of the nicest designs of the period, hands down, of any brand. However, there was also the B210 with its thick C pillar and its strange combination of huge bumper, weird grille, and strange looking creases along its body. Some of their products in the ’80s were awful too. To this day I avoid Nissans.
I’ve had a soft spot for these since they arrived, especially the coupe, which works quite well for me. The sedan not quite as much so, but even then I appreciate what Nissan was trying to do: break out of the clean, European boxy mold, and let their hair down. Yes, some of the results of that are a bit uneven, like the Cherry coupe, although I’ve come to appreciate it too.
Count me as one who disagrees. I like the styling of these with exceptions of course. Two door with a trunk and asian market bumpers? Yes! or a longroof. Definitely a longroof. The fastback and 4 door are a little much to look at. A nice l-series motor swap would do wonders for driveability.
My lab partner in college in the early 80’s was given a 5spd fastback for a loaner while the shop replaced the transmission in his 70’s Hondamatic Civic. After two days he called them and asked if he could trade the Civic for the loaner. No deal.
There was a mint rust free two door with trunk running around locally in the mid 2000’s here. The pus yellow colour caught my eye and then so did the red-head that got out of it. Talk about a distraction! I nearly wrecked my car in a drive through lane.
I hate these, and all the early-to late ’80s Japanese econoboxes with a violent passion. I’m still traumatised by an ’86 ultra stripper car that my Mom had for a few years. It was a real hair shirt car. The worst thing about it was that with a few dollars spent on A/C, radio, and cloth upholstery it could have been a pretty decent conveyance, but it had a definite by God we will punish you severely for being so cheap. Unlike something like a Chevette, which really didn’t get better the more you spent on it, there were better versions of this car and it made sure you knew it. It was painfully stripped and had no air of desireability whatsoever, it was NOT cheap and cheerful, it was cheap and GRIM, like a dry, cardboardy hamburger with no condiments made out of vaguely defined “meat products.” It screamed you could have done better and you didn’t. it would get you there, but you’d hate every minute of the trip. We also had the more sanely styled 210s (no B) in Driver’s Ed, which I suppose was testament to their durability but In comparison to a ’79 Malibu also in the Driver’s Ed fleet, the Malibu was light years distant in desireability. Cheap, ugly vinyl interiors, the sort of car that – if nothing else, will kick start you way up the ladder rather than drive it more than once.
Then these things were atrociously ugly, even for the ’70s. Seen one at a time, it’s not as hideous but when you had bunches of them, especially in comparison with something like a Nova or Aspen, the hideousness really stood out. It didn’t help that they all came in those 1970’s clean up on aisle 4 colours. Horrid bilious greens and yellows, various shades of Pampers contents browns, phlegmy oranges. Then they had those horrible cheap black vinyl interiors like the black hole of Calcutta.
is there a single good or coherent line on this car? Tatra’s statement about the profile being full of incoherence is dead on correct. Why does the rear window kick up like that? The taillights are sleek and have nothing to do with the rest of the car, and Datsun, having found an attractive element in this car, quickly did away with them. The grille is obviously cheap plastic and overstyled. What partial decent lines there are are mucked up by cheap plastic doodads as decoration.
I used to think that the problem was adding too many styling cues to too small a surface. Small cars should be simply styled, like the hatchback Monza. Now with the new Odyssey I’ve realised that too many styling cues on too large a surface is equally hideous.
I quite like the current Odyssey. 🙂
And yet, I loved the pictures of your house and garden and would like the same things in my house.
An old girlfriend had a Datsun B210. It was ugly, noisy, cramped, and rode like a buckboard. She thought my aged Slant Six Plymouth Duster was a luxury car in comparison.
The Datsun did have a talent for not often going to the gas station.
Something weird happened, definitely. Nissan went from an attractive 510 to these bizarre cars. Then five years later, Nissan gave us boring cars.
I think they try too hard to look different. The Nissan Leaf looks like Jar Jar Binks, the Cube looked like a Kindergartener styled it, the Juke looks like a Joke, the Infinity QX looks like a manatee, and the Murano is ridiculously over-styled. Once again, Nissan is back to designing cars that scream, “Look at ME!”
Then in the early nineties they had some really beautiful cars (S13 Silvia, R32 and R33 Skyline) which they kept mostly in Japan, then they got forgettable again.
Mechanically great cars but ugly when new and at 21 years old when I bought a well used one as a runabout they hadnt improved Datsun somehow managed to combine light weight economy with marshmallow handling and bullet proof engines, definitely a gift. these 120Y styling followed or lead the equally contorted 180B/Bluebird of the 70s at one size bigger.
And in between they somehow squeezed the half-size bigger 160J/Violet, though fortunately not in Australia or IIRC NZ.
Nissan had such a wide range in the seventies most export markets seemed to get every second model: 100A/Cherry or 120Y/Sunny, 160J/Violet or 180B/Bluebird, Laurel/240L or Skyline/240K, Gloria or 280C/Cedric.
We did get the Violet here in NZ Old Pete, in sedan and coupe form. Most sedans were 140J and coupes 160J, but some came in with JDM badging.
Sought after when new (due to higher spec than the locally-assembled Dattos) they’re still sought-after today and command good money.
American design influence > Pininfarina lookalikes( and Guigaro origami to follow). But then I seldom agree with the collective, 70s Datsuns are cool looking, outside and inside. The 5mph bumpers hit them hard in the US though.
Yes it is awkward, but in my book it suffers like any small car trying to adopt American styling cues of the era.
That side sculpting reminded me immediately of the original Mercury Cougar. The crease over each wheel well and the line between them that gently lowers as it moves to the rear wheel. The Datsun’s wheel well creases seem to partly disappear due to bad body repairs.
The difference is that the Cougar had the length to develop the line better and the width to give those fender bulges full effect.
I never saw the similarity before, but you’re right. That Cougar though – one of the best looking American cars of the decade.
I always kinda liked their sort of shrunken-Detroit look, particularly 610 and 710s, like a Skylark left in the dryer too long. I actually looked around for some not long ago but just try to find one now! You’d better be in the West Coast to have even a prayer of locating one that’s not more rust than metal.
The CC effect strikes again- I’ve been eyeing this classic on Craigslist for a couple of weeks:
Craigslist F-10 Link
I actually found it while searching the nebulous phrase “Ran when parked.” If everything is present underhood, I think I could get it back on the road for less than $400 in parts. However, the acquisition cost is about $1,200 too much…
Here’s a picture to whet the appetite…
It’s an interpreting comparison with the equally overwrought Civic alongside it
Tell us how you really feel! Haha.
On one hand, the 60s Datsuns are really clean, elegant and timeless. But on the other hand, the 70s ones are truly memorable. Datsun, although perhaps inspired by the Detroit 3, went to the effort of creating their own design language. If you ask me to picture a Familia or Colt or Corolla from that era, I’d have to take a second to think. The 120Y’s design, however, is seared in my memory.
IMO it’s one of Datsun’s better 70s designs. I found the larger 610 looked a bit too heavily inspired by late 60s/early 70s domestics so it looks a bit derivative.
I wish I could see an F10 in person. We never got them here and they’re just so adorably ugly…
There was a hatchback on my local craigslist a while back. It had been sitting in a garage for years, which explains why it still existed.
I love a 120Y. My dad had one back in the early 80’s, and must’ve gotten rid of it by the mid-80’s, replaced with a KE70 Corolla.
120Y’s are very rare here nowadays, even my dad’s one was terminal with rust at 10 years old. Still a few granny-owned low mileage, always garaged examples out there, but fewer and fewer.
Here in NZ there was a special version called the SSS with twin carbs and extractors etc.
Reading this post on my evening commute home has almost gotten me into trouble, because I keep having to suppress loud laughter. Hilarious…and awesome.
The “Delirium Datsun” array of the those six cars are truly hideous. I think our featured car (the early front notwithstanding) isn’t really a complete, aesthetic offender. I like some of the Detroit-esque features that you pointed out (thank you for that).
Great piece, as per your usual.
I recall shopping for these in 1976. It remains the only car i’ve sat my 5’8″ frame in and didn’t have enough headroom.
Regarding that interior shot, it looks like the other seat should say “GROOM . . GROOM . . . GROOM . . . “
I don’t think it looks that bad, The big wheels help it look quite athletic,I never liked em back in the day, but now ? yep I like it.
Running away now .
Yeah the stance, and the fact it now seems so retro, really help this one.
I despised these when they were common in the UK, full of holes at six years old, painted some dog puke colour and fitted with those “tin hat attacked with a ball pein hammer” wheel covers. (One or two missing, natch.)
They were comfortably outlasted by the shite being peddled by BL, Vauxhall etc at the time.
Best car
Bought one for forty guilders once
Drove it for over a year and a half
Would buy one without the blink of an eye.
Dirrek de Datsun was its name.
Merrily started when there would be a foot of snow on the bonnet
Bullet proof Japanese engineering.
i hated the styling when they were new but, count me as one of the minority that likes the lines of these cars now. much better than the blobism that pervades the industry today. in fact, nissan still does some interesting work like the juke.
why should the japanese just copy american or european styling? i see these as a sign of growning japanese confidence in the 1970s. they sort of make sense when you look at some of the weird creatures that were being created for manga during the same period.
They definitely look… unique, but I still like ’70s Datsuns. Its probably because I wasn’t alive then, so its impossible for me to take the rose-tinted glasses off. I see them and think: “Seventies! Everything being colourful! Drugs! Brady bunch!
Circa 1975, “Wheels” magazine used to do a styling analysis of then current models. The 120Y earned the comment “that I feel sorry for the sheet metal, to be tortured into that shape” Or similar. I have to agree.
Cherry, Sunny, Violet, Bluebird, Laurel, and Cedric were the JDM names for those models, which the overseas sales force seemed to regard with varying degrees of outright embarrassment. (Yutaka Katayama famously insisted on skipping the “Fairlady” name for the 240Z, although of course a fair number of fans have ended up adding JDM Fairlady Z badges to U.S.-spec cars anyway.)
What I see in the featured Sunny is a disconnect between the conceptual and the practical ends of automotive design, where what may have seemed quite decent as a sketch or a scale model starts falling apart aesthetically as it’s “productionized.” The rain gutters clutter the side window treatment; at production scale, the below-the-beltline tuck-under of the body sides makes the wheels appear to have been pushed out awkwardly far (not helped a bit by the photo car’s wider-than-stock wheels). Budget limitations turn details like the little grilles inboard of the headlights, which may have added racy character in a quarter-scale model, into cheap and tacky add-ons.
I suspect it was not unlike some of the late Chrysler designs by Virgil Exner Sr. Some (though not all) of those looked fine on paper or even at the model stage, but unsympathetic cost-cutting and production changes made a mess of the results. (Ironically, some years earlier, Exner had written a well-known, amusing essay on the tragedy of the car designer watching a beautiful concept hacked to pieces by the various practical demands of the auto business.)
Some of what separated top-flight designs from indifferent or ugly ones is not big aesthetic ideas, but a certain practiced eye for how stuff is going to look when it’s actually built on a production line. For example, designers who worked in the Pontiac studio in the early ’60s have said that part of why the designs of Pontiac’s mid-decade heyday were so successful was that chief stylist Jack Humbert had a really exceptional draftsman’s eye and knew how to get the proportions and details to look right in the metal.
That eye is what I think these designs most missed. With most of the designs you mention, I can see what they were thinking, but something was lost in translation.
These things sounded exactly like an unending fart, which was fitting because every second one here was painted in a yellow that should only be seen inside a diaper. And also like an unwanted turd, you couldn’t get rid of them: flush and flush as the years and mistreatment have, and STILL they bob back up, ready to cause embarrassment and shame.
In an attempt to muster some sympathy, it is important to acknowledge that these were not styled, as T-87 claims. They were the victims of an attack, hence the name: all those injuries and mutilations on the body, numbering 120, why?
Australians bought them in some numbers during that period in which pants were too tight and hair too big and important functions of the brain were either disabled by heat or lack of blood supply and so the gross failure of communal judgement went unnoticed. Also, every citizen was drinking wine from casks then, which helped, or not.
Thus, drunk and strangled, no-one seemed to pick up that one sat – or squatted, really – inside with knees covering one’s ears and one’s pointed ass bones bruised upon a layer of vinyl with no stuffing, nor that THAT noise came in from every direction to deafen all present nor that suspension travel had been suspended and dampers discarded nor that a bump in a corner meant three lane changes. Hell, many sold here had vinyl roofs and automatics, and a very few old buyers whose previous experience of high speed must have been the Austin Seven specified airconditioning.
As we sobered up and undid a button or more, so did Datsun, and to the relief of all, they released the Sunny, which was still an awful device but but at least it didn’t wear the badge of awfulness as a suit.
I would say that, blessedly, we shall not see their like again – except that, slashes, cuts, meandering lines of nothing, eyebrow-height window sills, spoilers, diffusers and doo-dads galore, we are, right now.
I shall continue with sensible fitting clothes, moderation, and seek out a lightly used and restrained Euro and will have no part in this recycled madness.
I commented, it went away, could someone please find it for me?
Restored it (above)… thanks for letting us know.