Feature Article from Hemmings Sports & Exotic Car

August, 2008 - Jeff Koch

The badge itself is a simple one: A blue bar with white letters across the traditional red Japanese rising sun, not only indicates the car's build heritage, but also perhaps its color scheme touches on the importance of the American market. What's more vital, now that we've had a quarter-century to settle into the Nissan name, is--where did the cute little Datsun name come from?

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The Datsun name has its origins in 1914, when the first car built by the Kwaishinsha Motorcar Works was called DAT, an acronym of the family names of the primary investors: Kenjiro Den, Rokuro Aoyama and Meitaro Takeuchi. By 1925, it was DAT Motorcar Company, specializing in military trucks as there was virtually no market for passenger cars at that time; a year later, DAT Motorcar merged with Jitsuyo Motors due to slow sales. In 1931, the company introduced a car and called it Datson, literally, "Son of DAT." The Japanese pronunciation, DAT-to-san, encouraged images of "a fast rabbit," or Datto.

Meanwhile and separately, Nippon Sangyo started in 1928 as a holding company that controlled foundries and auto parts makers, as well as Hitachi electronics; the Nissan name was an abbreviation of Nippon Sangyo used on the Toyko stock market (originally NiSan). In 1933, Nippon Sangyo bought DAT Motors and merged it with its Tobata Casting company. When board members frowned on this, Nippon Sangyo founder Yoshisuke Ayukawa split it off from other Nippon Sangyo holdings. This generally is considered the start of Nissan building automobiles. The Datson name was changed to Datsun shortly after the takeover, because "son" translates as "financial loss" in Japanese.

The company shortly moved to Yokohama, and was renamed once again to Nissan Motors; although some Datsun cars were built in the mid-'30s, the company largely concentrated on military contracts for engines, Nissan trucks and airplanes. Japan was knee-deep in the Sino-Japan war by then, and Ayukawa was somewhat taken with the war movement; by 1939, Nissan had moved to Manchuria, which was then under Japanese occupation. The well-connected Ayukawa was also heavily involved in the Manchuko colonial government at this time. Perhaps as a result, during WWII, Nissan was the fourth-largest holding company in Japan, but after the war, Occupation forces took over the Yokohama facility, the Soviets had claimed the Manchurian operation for themselves, and Aikawa was arrested and imprisoned as a war criminal for 21 months. He never returned to Nissan.

Pre-war, those inside the company considered Datsun as the car brand, while Nissan was the truck brand: It was understood that if you used one name or another to describe a vehicle, you'd know the kind of vehicle you were talking about. Yet Nissan was initially keen to push the Datsun name around the world, and in the U.S., particularly, as the Nissan name may have been familiar to the millions of veterans who might recognize it and instantly dismiss it. Yutaka Katayama, Nissan North America's president for 15 years and known as Mr. K. and "Father of the Z-car" to millions of fans, agreed, and was happy to use the Datsun name in America.

Mr. K. fought to keep the Datsun name alive in America, despite the desires of long-time Nissan Japan president and rival Katsuji Kawamata. In an interview, he expressed regret over the Datsun name in America, calling it a "pet name" for the company's cars. He had seen other Japanese car companies do well in America, and do so with their own names--Toyota and Honda, for example. So, he reasoned, why shouldn't Nissan do the same? Mr. K. lost that fight, and despite his good works in America--subsidizing Roadster racers, running roughshod over the Nissan board to get the 510 built, almost single-handedly reviving Albrecht Goertz's GT concept and bringing it to life as the 240Z--was recalled to Japan in the mid-'70s for this and other arguments with the home office.

In late 1981, Datsun announced that they would change their name to Nissan over a period of 1982-'84, and while many will recall that there was some confusion at the time, Nissan's sales remained at or near half a million cars a year until the late '80s, half a decade after the Datsun name had disappeared from American shores forever.

The Datsun name was briefly revived on a home-market pickup truck variant in 2002.



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