Junkyard Find: 1979 Datsun 210

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

Back when I was coming of automotive age, in the early 1980s, most of my peers who got hand-me-down cars from relatives ended up with Vegas, Pintos, Colts, and Datsun 210s (for some reason, I don’t recall anyone at my high school getting a Civic, and very few got Corollas). Almost all the 210s are long gone these days, since there’s little interest in restoring them and you can get better fuel economy and reliability from a 1990s Tercel or Metro, but every so often I see one in a self-service wrecking yard. We saw this ’79 four-door in 2011, and today we’ll be looking at a ’79 two-door.

Yes, the 210 was very, very slow, thanks to its fuel-sipping 65-horsepower engine. But look— rear-wheel drive!

This one is pretty grimy, but there’s no rust (I found this car in California) and it would have been easily restored… if anyone cared about late-70s 210s.


Nobody ever got 47 MPG out of a 210, unless it was downhill at 49 MPH, but they did sip gas by Malaise Era standards.




Murilee Martin
Murilee Martin

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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  • Dgb100 Dgb100 on Jun 28, 2013

    One of my HS buds had a 73 or 74 Honda Civic with a two-speed clutchless manual transmission. You had 1 -2 -N -R. It was awful but awesome. It was the very opposite of a muscle car. We could literally out run the car for a block or so.

  • Gholovacs Gholovacs on Apr 08, 2014

    Does anybody know where this 79 Datsun 210 2dr is in California? Need a rear panel glass, looks like it is good in the pic. Thanks

  • 1995 SC At least you can still get one. There isn't much for Ford folks to be happy about nowadays, but the existence of the Mustang and the fact that the lessons from back in the 90s when Ford tried to kill it and replace it with the then flavor of the day seem to have been learned (the only lessons they seem to remember) are a win not only for Ford folks but for car people in general. One day my Super Coupe will pop its headgaskets (I know it will...I read it on the Internet). I hope I will still be physically up to dropping the supercharged Terminator Cobra motor into it. in all seriousness, The Mustang is a.win for car guys.
  • Lorenzo Heh. The major powers, military or economic, set up these regulators for the smaller countries - the big guys do what they want, and always have. Are the Chinese that unaware?
  • Lorenzo The original 4-Runner, by its very name, promised something different in the future. What happened?
  • Lorenzo At my age, excitement is dangerous. one thing to note: the older models being displayed are more stylish than their current versions, and the old Subaru Forester looks more utilitarian than the current version. I thought the annual model change was dead.
  • Lorenzo Well, it was never an off-roader, much less a military vehicle, so let the people with too much money play make believe.
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