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GTP Cool Wall: 1968-1973 Datsun 510
- Thread starter GranTurismo916
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- Wellington
It's hard to explain, and you can't really see it unless you feel the same appreciation, but it's simply different. Old school Japanese cars, to me at least, provide a feeling that isn't recreated by any other nation's car industry. Same goes for Italian cars, and English cars - they all have a substance which simply appeals, but without reason, and give the nation's industry a form of identity.
But that's just me.
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Volvo 140-Series (which in the styling point of view is almost exactly the same as the Volvo 200-Series, which is often considered the most boring looking car in the world) is also a fair comparison.
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English, Italian, Swedish some French and some German manufacturers all produced very proletarian, bland looking cars in that late 60's, early 70's era. The Japanese were no different, especially as their cars were heavily influenced by what was being produced in Europe at the time. There's nothing, other than a little JDM fog, that makes the Datsun 510 stand out in a crowd of it's international contemporaries.
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- Wellington
This is where I simply disagree, and it's not by logic. The Bellet, to me, has a completely different precence, to me, which signifies a different feeling entirely and in the end, the coolness factor.
While they are basically the same car on paper, the execution, to me is wholly different in the actual product.
While they are basically the same car on paper, the execution, to me is wholly different in the actual product.
IMO, all humble compact sedans of the 1960s-1970s are cool by default, including the Fiat 124 and Volvo 140 as well as the Datsun 510. To me, boring styling becomes endearing with age -- that's happening now with some 1990s cars -- and the relatively diminuitive size of these cars (particularly by today's standards), plus thin pillars and '60s/'70s proportions, is all quite appealing. The fact that old throwaway commuter cars can be much rarer to find than enthusiast cars from the same period adds to the cool factor (though quite a few 510s have been preserved as an enthusiast's car).
- 29,612
- Bratvegas
- GTP_Liquid
Very much in the same way that this Datsun 510 is a photocopy of the Fiat 124. It's coming from that period in which, as we happened to have discussed here on GTP quite recently, Japan was generating its best-selling cars by copying European designs but with the innovative Japanese engineering.
However, @SVX, that's not saying this car is rubbish because it's 'merely' a copy. There's nothing wrong with enjoying this car on its own merit but to say that it's particularly unique is probably not true. You're entitled to love it, regardless.
One only has to look at the subsequent globalisation and the standardisation and cross-market use of car platforms to see the futility in arguing that copycat cars or shared-platform cars aren't unique and therefore crap, which, to be fair, I don't think anyone was, and see the futility in putting some cars on mythical pedastals.
You like what you like but history is demonstrative.
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- Wellington
Oh, I definitely know it was a copy - that was the thing in the Japanese car industry back then. What I'm saying though is that it even if it's a 'copy', it produces a one off stigma that the original doesn't produce, sort of making it more of a 'remix' of the original rather than a straight up copy. It's the identification of the nation it comes from that makes it unique, to me, even though on paper it's really a boring econobox.
To reference the Escort and Bellet again: yes they're practically the same thing, a hotted up econobox with parts tacked on, but you can tell the difference in them, you can tell which country they come from - they still have their cultural identity, and to people like me that makes all the difference.
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How does this make any sense when the Bellett GT-R predated even the inspiration for the Escort Mexico and the notchback Bellett the GT-R was based on predated the entire Escort line by 4 years?
Sage Ages
(Banned)
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Quite vaguely if at all. They share a compact boxy design but otherwise, they present themselves differently.
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- Fionia
If anything, it was heavily inspired by the Germans, unlike the earlier, Italian-inspired Bluebird 410. Yutaka "Mr. K" Katayama, head of Nissan USA in the 1960s, was a huge car enthusiast and a race car builder. After driving a BMW 1600-2 in the mid-1960s, he decided that the BMW would be his benchmark for the new 510 being developed in Japan.
They were similar only in concept, though. The 510 may have shared a few styling cues with comtemporary European cars, but then what era in car design has not produced similar-looking designs? The styling of the 510 was distinctly Nissan and a clear evolution of its predecessor. It combined certain lines of the 410 in a blander, boxier design that was purposefully inoffensive in order to be taken seriously in the American market. But if you compare the 510 to other Nissan bestsellers launched in 1968, namely the Laurel and the Skyline, it should be quite evident that Nissan was trying to establish a cohesive corporate design language at the time.
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I voted cool. It's a classic car that most people can gather around. It struck the zeitgeist of young Americans just right, and I'm sure that there are many people out there, enthusiasts or otherwise, who have very fond memories of the 510. That warrants a cool in my book.
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Cool, popular race cars.
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The Escort was rallying (with the stripe down the side and/or the matt black bonnet, which Ford works rally cars had been using since the early 60's) in late '68 and early '69. The Bellet GT-R wasn't unveiled until September '69.
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So it's "an exact fascimile" because it aped a couple of stripes?
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The concept of it is. As I was referencing the styling of it over the standard car.
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I'm not buying what you are selling. Ford didn't make a street version of the Escort with those stripes and styling features until a year after the Bellett GT-R was released. Maybe Isuzu took styling inspiration from Ford's rally liveries (and even that claim is tenuous, the stripes are differently shaped and lower down on the body than the generic Escort stripes), but there was quite simply no road counterpart at the time to copy. Isuzu would have needed a time machine to copy the concept of the Ford Escort Mexico.
