Collectible Classic: 1968-73 Datsun 510  Sam Smith Collectible
Classic: 1968-73 Datsun 510  There was a time when buying a
Japanese car marked you as someone a little short on common
sense. It was a time when anything made on that side of the
Pacific was regarded as tinny and short-lived, a time when the
best-selling car in America wasn't a Toyota. Detroit was still
mired in its old-school ways, and few people really cared about
fuel costs. The boxy Datsun 510 helped set the ball rolling to
change all that, and it remains one of the most important
Japanese cars ever built. It's no small coincidence that the 510
was also a flaming hoot to drive.  Early Japanese offerings in
the United States were either too small, too full of sewing-
machine engineering, too slow, or some painful combination of
the three. This was largely due to still-isolated Japan's fuzzy
picture of American driving. Yutaka Katayama, the enigmatic head
of Datsun/Nissan America, played a key part in focusing that
image. A nonconformist and a r