Datsun On-Do Won't Be Debuting In New York

Likely not having to meet certain safety standards as well.

@Derek Kreindler it looks like an indian market car... in fact i think they already have it the interior looks like it lacks airbags and basic safety from say 10 yrs ago but even so i like the honest engineering involved the estates looks ok but i dont know about 7 people onboard with a what looks like half the motor of a normal car what next? a jacked up FWD CUV based on the same platform?

This car has a 1.6-liter, 87 hp motor, which should produce good fuel economy. Your CAFE reference is frankly nuts. We're not getting this car because we wouldn't buy it. We already have a Versa that is more powerful and probably better equipped, and that may crash better.

I actually googled it and found some Indian sites talking about this car. According to them and some wikipedia articles it's a Lada Granta underneath. The Granta is based on the older Lada Kalina. So, it would seem that the basic systems and engine are Lada through and through while the eletro-electronic systems, AC, ABS, airbags, steering etc. is Renault-Nissan. Supposedly Nissan showed this car and some other "Datsun" products in clinics in Brazil and the cars were rejected. Finally, as to safety, the original Lada Granta has stuff like airbags and abs and is exported to Western Europe. So I expect it to be safe enough.

@Pch101 If the car is well screwed together and durable, people here will buy them. When Nissan was still Datsun here, they were very successful selling basic transportation at a low price. Today's low purchasing power economy is similar to the '70s, and there just might be enough customers to make it worthwhile for Nissan to import. My CAFE reference was based on the Founders' original concept of limited government. If you're a progressive, you wouldn't understand.

@Lorenzo I was looking at a beat early 80's Nissan King Cab 4WD in a parking lot this morning and remembered how popular they were.

@Lorenzo It would be nice if you didn't use the founders as a lame excuse for your flawed faux-analysis of the auto industry. Nissan already sells us a cheap car (or two, if you count the Versa Note separately from the Versa.) Why would they want to sell a second (or third) one that Americans don't want and that competes directly with other vehicles in their lineup? In any case, CAFE is a fuel economy requirement. The car discussed here would obviously not get poor fuel economy, given its low power, which should make it pretty obvious that CAFE has zero to do with this.

@Pch101 The US will not get any Datsun branded product. Your opinion has little to do with whether they are imported into the US. The Renault/Nissan Alliance stated that the re-introduction of the Datsun marque will only be on sale in developing nations. I do remember Northern Africa was a prime location as well for manufacture of Datsuns.

Pch101, my comment was that CAFE rules prevent the 3-box tall greenhouse of the Datsun. I believe the high rear and belt line, lower greenhouse and sloping rear window are not just design fads, but a result of wind tunnel design to comply with the CAFE formula. You are free to disagree, but that was the first part of my comment. The second part of my comment actually questions the government's power to impose CAFE at all, since there's no health or safety justification for regulating fuel economy. I believe, as did the Founders, that the government's powers are limited and it's actions must be justified. You're free to disagree, and even claim the government's power to regulate is open-ended. I can see you misread my comment on the first point, and you disagree with me on the second point. That's fine, we can agree to disagree, as long as there are no insults or disrespect.

@Pch101 The cars today give us what we want -- sports car performance with 300HP engines and good gas mileage at the same time. The only way you can achieve both is to tweak the aerodynamics. Yes, you could go back to the 1970s-1980s model of stripped boxy cars with anemic sub 100 HP engines. But, despite the howlings of the B&B; these would sell as well as the brown manual diesel wagon and the compact FWD pickup truck.

@Marcelo de Vasconcellos May God bless those clinics. This is one ugly car. As for the Lada roots, wasn't the Kalina just a re-heated 110? As in the Lada project that was born when the USSR was still around? 1980's soviet tech right there.

@Victor 110 is a bigger car than the Kalina. I believe the Kalina was their first post soviet development.

@Pch101 American roads are crawling with crossovers, and yet seriously you want to claim that CAFE results in reduced car height? The assertion is obviously ridiculous, given all of the elevated vehicles on American roads today. Dragging the founders into it only highlights the degree of confusion in your arguments.

@Lorenzo We need more sub-10K cars here...I get requests all of the time for cars with a $250/month payment. If we still had the last-gen Rios with the "$8,995" advert price (loss leader), I would have "sold" twice as many cars as I did last month.

Pch101: weren't you banned here before?

@Pch101 Pointing out the absurdity of your arguments isn't "trolling", but an effort to offer facts to contradict your penchant for hysteria.