Datsun was an automobile
marque. The name was created in 1931 by the
DAT Motorcar Co. for a new car model,
spelling it as "
Datson" to indicate its smaller size when
compared to the existing, larger DAT car. Later, in 1933 after
Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. took
control of DAT Motorcar Co., the last syllable of Datson was
changed to "sun", because "son" also means "loss"
(
損) in
Japanese,
and also to honour the sun depicted in the national flag, hence the
name "
Datsun" : .. Nissan phased out the Datsun brand in
March 1986. The Datsun name is most famous for the sports cars
referred to as the
Fairlady roadsters and
later the Fairlady (
240Z) coupes.
History
The origins of Datsun
Before the Datsun brand name came into being, an automobile named
the DAT car was built in 1914, by the , in the Azabu-Hiroo District
in Tokyo. The new car's name was an acronym of the company's
partners' surnames:
Conflicting information:What's in a Name? The Change From
Datsun to NissanBy Daniel Banks"This despite Business Week’s error
that Den, Aoyama, and Takeuchi founded Nissan. They did not, of
course. Kenjiro Den, Rokuro Aoyama, and Meitaro Takeuchi were 3
financial backers and friends for one of the originators of the
Japanese automobile industry, Masujiro Hashimoto, who founded
Kaishinsha Jidosha Koto, or “Kaishinsha Motor Car Works” in
1911."
The firm was renamed Kaishinsha Motorcar Co. in 1918, seven years
after their establishment and again, in 1925, to DAT Motorcar Co.
DAT Motors constructed trucks in addition to the DAT passenger
cars. In fact, their output focused on trucks since there was
almost no consumer market for passenger cars at the time. Beginning
in 1918, the first DAT trucks were assembled for the military
market. The low demand from the military market during the 1920s
forced DAT to consider merging with other automotive industries.
In 1926
the Tokyo
-based DAT
Motors merged with the Osaka-based also known as Jitsuyo Motors
(established 1919, as a Kubota subsidiary) to become in Osaka until 1932.
The DAT corporation had been selling full size cars to Japanese
consumers under the DAT name since 1914 (
Madely, pg. 19), but in 1930 the Japanese government
created a ministerial ordinance that allowed cars with engines up
to 500 cc to be driven without a licence. (
TOGO, pg. 11). DAT Automobile Manufacturing
began development of a line of 495 cc cars to sell in this new
market segment, calling the new small cars "Datson" - meaning "Son
of DAT". The name was changed to "Datsun" two years later in 1933.(
Madely, pg. 20)
The first prototype Datson was completed in the summer of 1931.(
Nissan). The production vehicle was called the
Datson Type 10, and "approximately ten" of these cars were sold in
1931. (
JSAE). They sold around 150 cars in 1932, now
calling the model the Datson Type 11(
JSAE). In 1933 the government rules were revised to
permit 750 cc engines, and Datsun increased the size of their
microcar engine to the maximum size allowed (
JSAE). These larger displacement cars were called the
Datsun Type 12.(
Nissan Heritage)
Datsun in the American market
The use of the
Datsun name in the American market derives
from the name Nissan used for its production cars. In fact, the
cars produced by Nissan already used the Datsun brand name, a
successful brand in Japan since 1932, long before
World War II. In fact before the entry into the
American market in 1958, Nissan did not produce cars under the
Nissan brand name, but only trucks. Their in-house designed cars
were always branded as
Datsuns. Hence, for Nissan
executives it would be only natural to use such a successful name
when exporting models to the United States. Only in the 1960s did
Nissan begin to brand some automobile models as
Nissans,
and these were limited to their high-end models, for example the
Cedric luxury
sedan. In America, the Nissan branch was named "
Nissan
Motor Corporation in U.S.A.", and chartered on September 28,
1960, in California. Nissan may have had no problems with using the
name Nissan in America, but the small cars the firm exported to
America were still named Datsun.
Corporate
choice favoured “Datsun”, so as to distance the parent factory Nissan’s association by
Americans
with Japanese military manufacture. In fact
Nissan's involvement in Japan's military industries was
substantial. The company's car production at the Yokohama plant
shifted towards military needs just a few years after the first
passenger cars rolled off the assembly line, on April 11, 1935. By
1939 Nissan's operations had moved to
Manchuria, then under Japanese occupation, where
its founder and President, Yoshisuke Ayukawa, established the
Manchurian Motor Company to manufacture military trucks.
Ayukawa, a well connected and aggressive risk taker, also made
himself a principal partner of the Japanese Colonial Government of
Manchukuo. Ultimately, Nissan Heavy
Industries emerged near the end of the war as an important player
in Japan’s war machinery.
After the war ended, Soviet Union
seized all of Nissan’s Manchuria assets, while the
Occupation Forces made use of over
half of the Yokohama plant. General MacArthur had Ayukawa imprisoned
for twenty-one months as a
war
criminal. After release he was forbidden from returning to any
corporate or public office until 1951. He was never allowed back
into Nissan, which returned to passenger car manufacture in 1947
and to its original name of Nissan Motor Company Ltd. in
1949.
Datsun Fairlady
American service
personnel in their teens or early twenties during the Second
World War would be in prime car-buying age by 1960, if only to find
an
economical, small second car for their
growing family needs.
Yutaka
Katayama, (Mr. "K") former president of Nissan's American
operations, would have had his personal second world war
experiences in mind supporting the name Datsun. Katayama's visit to
Nissan’s Manchuria truck factory in 1939, made him realise the
appalling conditions of the assembly lines, leading him to abandon
the firm. In 1945, near the end of the war, Katayama was ordered to
return to the Manchurian plant, however he rebuffed these calls and
refused to return.
Datsun 240Z (USDM) or Fairlady Z
(JDM)
Katayama desired to build and sell passenger cars to people, not to
the military; for him it was the name "
Datsun" that
survived the war with its
purity intact, not
"
Nissan". This obviously led Katayama to have problems
with the corporate management. The discouragement felt by Katayama
as regards his prospects at Nissan, led to his going on the verge
of resigning, when Datsun’s
1958
Australian Mobilgas victories vaunted him, as leader of the
winning Datsun teams, to national prominence in a
Japan bent on regaining international
status.
Katayama was made Vice President of the Nissan North American
company in 1960, and as long as he was involved in decision making,
both as North American Vice President from 1960 to 1965, and then
President of Nissan Motor Company – USA from 1965 to 1975, the cars
were sold as Datsuns. “What we need to do is improve our car’s
efficiency gradually and creep
up slowly before others notice.
Then, before Detroit
realizes it,
we will have become an excellent car maker, and the customers will
think so too. If we work hard to sell our own cars, we won’t
be bothered by whatever the other manufacturers do. If all we do is
worry about the other cars in the race, we will definitely
lose.”
Rebranding
Datsun 720
In Japan, there appears to have been what probably constituted a
long held 'official' company
bias against use
of the name “Datsun”. At the time, Kawamata was a veteran of
Nissan, in the last year of his presidency, a powerful figure whose
experience in the firm exceeded two decades. His rise to its
leadership position occurred in 1957 in part because of his
handling of the critical Nissan workers' strike that began May 25,
1953, and ran for 100 days. During his tenure as Nissan President,
Kawamata stated that he "regretted that his company did not imprint
its corporate name on cars, the way
Toyota
does. ‘Looking back, we wish we had started using Nissan on all of
our cars,’ he says. ‘But Datsun was a pet name for the cars when we
started
exporting.’ ”
Ultimately, the decision was made to stop using the brand name
Datsun worldwide, in order to strengthen the company name
Nissan.
“The decision to change the name Datsun to Nissan in the U.S. was
announced in the fall of 1981. The rationale was that the name
change would help the pursuit of a
global strategy. A single name worldwide
would increase the possibility that advertising campaigns,
brochures, and promotional materials could be used across countries
and simplify product design and manufacturing. Further, potential
buyers would be exposed to the name and product when traveling to
other countries. Industry observers, however, speculated that the
most important motivation was that a name change would help Nissan
market stocks and bonds in the U.S.
They also presumed substantial ego involvement, since the absence of the Nissan name in
the U.S
. surely rankled Nissan executives who had seen
Toyota and Honda become
household words.”
Ultimately, the name change campaign lasted for a three year period
from 1982 to 1984, and cost Nissan a figure in the region of US$500
million. Operational costs included the changing of signs at 1,100
Datsun dealerships, and amounted to US$30 million. Another US$200
million were spent during the 1982 to 1986 advertising campaigns,
where the
“Datsun, We Are Driven!” campaign yielded to
“The Name is Nissan” campaign. (“The Name is Nissan”
campaign was used for some years beyond 1985). Another US$50
million was spent on Datsun advertisements that were paid for but
stopped or never used. Five years after the name change program was
over,
Datsun still remained more familiar than
Nissan.
Rebirth
In 2001, Nissan marketed its
D22
pick-up model in Japan with the name
Datsun, this time
however the use of the brand name was wholly restricted to this one
specific model name. Production of this model was between May 2001
and October 2002
See also
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