Junkyard Find: 1979 Datsun 210
Names for various flavors of the Nissan Sunny got very confusing during the 1970s and 1980s. Starting in the 1978 model year, the front-wheel-drive replacement for the B210— known as the B310 within Nissan— kept the “210” name in the United States (meanwhile, you could also buy “510s” that were actually A10 Violets), later evolving into the car that became the Sentra. These were cheap but reliable (for the time) misery boxes, competing with the likes of the Chrysler Omnirizon, and so very few of them escaped The Crusher when they started wearing out in the early 1990s. Here’s a rare example that I found in Southern California in January.
The Datsun name had just a few years to go at this point.
I can’t tell the A12 engine from the A14 at a glance; either way, this thing delivers well under 75 horsepower.
Pretty typical late-70s econobox interior. At least this car has a manual transmission.
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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Got one of these new in 1980. I believe that in Canada the 210 stripper version was called the 'Sunny'. Advertised as the lowest priced car for at least a few months. Ours had 2 options, an auto transmission (yuck) and an AM radio that never worked properly. The floors were rubber. It hummed, buzzed and struggled with a full load. But it never let us down, and I put one heck of a lot of miles on it in the 3 years that we kept it. And believe me the amount of maintenance that it received was minimal.
I had a used 81 Datsun 310 4-door with a 4 speed manual from 1987-1991. Horsepower was all of 68. I sold my 1965 Plymouth Barracuda (with a Slant 6) in order to purchase the Datsun. With its plush velour seats and A/C, I thought it was quite an upgrade. People in the back seat would always ask me to open my door to let them out. I had to remind them that they had their own door. Guess it looked so sporty; the rear doors were overlooked by passengers. I don’t recall safety being a concern, especially stepping up from 1965. Of course, we still had freedom of choice back then. Now we just have regulation and monitoring.