Junkyard Find: 1974 Datsun B210
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.
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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I used to own one of those, back in 1985. This car nearly killed me. When driving at night at ca 60mph, i got a short circuit. Everyhting went pitch black. I just managed to stay on the road :O
When I was seven, a neighbor moved onto the block with a green B210. Even at that age, the ugliness of this car made no sense to me. It would sprout random rust spots that the owners would cover with spray paint they bought at pep boys. The B210 sure didn't help build Nissan's reputation for quality. Such a POS best forgotten.