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Junkyard Find: 1978 Datsun B210 Coupe

Murilee Martin — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 13:00:42 +0000

We saw a 1975 Datsun B210 hatchback Junkyard Find a few weeks back, and this ’74 B210 hatch about a year ago. Today, we’ll look at a fairly solid example of the B210 coupe.
This is a car that was once as numerous on American streets as is any mainstream 21st-century econobox today, but the B210 was even more susceptible to rust than other Japanese cars of the era and it didn’t resist depreciation quite as well as its Corolla and Civic rivals.
For those of you too young to have experienced slushbox-equipped B210s in person, imagine that you’re driving a Chevy Aveo. In quicksand. Towing a trailer loaded with overflowing Porta-Potties. Uphill.
Still, if you were patient on freeway onramps and didn’t mind losing stoplight drag races to cement mixers, the B210 was a pleasant enough car to drive. The purchaser of this one sprang for the no-doubt-extremely-expensive factory AM/FM radio.
Once you’ve paid for the radio, however, why would you want frivolous gauges?
I can’t recall whether this style hubcap was a Honey Bee-only design or slapped on all B210s of the era.

The fuel-economy claims of Malaise Era manufacturers had to be taken with a grain of salt, but the real-world B210 did manage to get into the 40 MPG range on the highway.

Junkyard Find: 1975 Datsun B210

Murilee Martin — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 13:00:19 +0000

The California streets of my childhood were full of Datsuns like this one, and the B210 remained a common sight in (rust-free parts of) America until well into the 1990s. Then, without anybody really noticing, nearly all of them disappeared. Every so often, I’ll find one in a self-service junkyard; there was this slushbox-equipped ’74 last year, and now this mustard-yellow ’75 has drifted into range of The Crusher’s jaws.
The 1.4 liter Nissan A14 pushrod engine was quite reliable and minimized the painful effects of OPEC price-gouging, but the B210 was sluggish even by the lax standards of the darkest days of the Malaise Era.

Datsun saves!
In 1983, Nissan recalled 328,318 Datsun B210s to repair a rust-prone fuel-tank support. I don’t recall hearing about B210s dropping fuel tanks on the highways back then, but it must have happened.
Will the high price of scrap metal flush out all the remaining B210s from their garages and driveways soon? We’ll see.

Junkyard Find: 1974 Datsun B210

Murilee Martin — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 13:00:56 +0000

Yesterday, we saw an once-ubiquitous 80s Japanese econobox that has nearly disappeared from the face of the earth; at the same Denver junkyard, I found a once-ubiquitous 70s Japanese econobox that also hasn’t been seen on the street for many years. The little fastback B210 was once everywhere.
75 horsepower under the hood, which meant that B210 drivers had to be patient on freeway onramps; even scaling in at under a ton, the B210 was pretty sluggish. Pintos owned the B210 at stoplight races.
The four-speed B210 was poky enough, but just imagine the agony of trying to accelerate with half the power being soaked up by an automatic transmission. Groan.
Still, these things were reasonably reliable (by the very lax standards of the era), sipped gas through a cocktail straw, and looked pretty good. Hey, what do you suppose an SR20DET-swapped B210 would be like?
Nissan was pretty good about making taillights and trim pieces look Mars Base-style futuristic back in those days; I think the current Sentra could use this treatment.
Sorry about the hazy photos— I was at the junkyard on an emergency mission to replace some theft-attempt-damaged parts on my Civic and had only my phone’s camera on me at the time. Check in later for the tale of How I Thwarted Another Civic Thief.