Monday Fun: Nissan Parties Like It's 1995

Derek Kreindler
by Derek Kreindler

If you’re like me, a dose of 90s Japanese automotive nostalgia is about as good as Prozac. Friend of TTAC Michael Banovsky unearthed this gem – a still intact website from 1995 highlighting Nissan’s home market offerings at the Tokyo Motor Show.

Coming on the tail end of Japan’s golden age of automobiles, the development cycles planned at the height of Japan’s economic bubble were coming to an end. For Nissan, this was a few years before the Carlos Ghson-era, and the rationalization of product and platforms had not yet begun. Vehicles like the Cima, Cedric and Gloria were sold side-by-side despite marginal differences in styling and content, while the aging 180SX was sold alongside the much more modern S14 Silvia.

My pick of the lineup is the Rasheen (above), a Pulsar-based CUV that coupled the slab-sided styling of a Hummer with the packaging of a Dacia Sandero-like front-drive CUV that was meant to be rugged and spartan, rather than a RAV4-like cute-ute.

Derek Kreindler
Derek Kreindler

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  • Bumpy ii Bumpy ii on Dec 15, 2014

    Looking through the prices is fun. You could almost get two GT-Rs for the cost of a President (aka Q45).

  • Ryoku75 Ryoku75 on Dec 15, 2014

    Looking around that link there is an interesting parallel between the Rasheen, Juke, and web design. Vintage sites, as simple and cheap as they look, load swiftly and are easy to figure out. As simple as the tastfully practical and boxy Rasheen. The Nissan Juke is modern web design, clunky, useless, and it needlessly complicated. We need more Rasheens, we need more sites with TTACs purposefully simple layout.

  • Mattel Mattel on Dec 15, 2014

    Love the Wartbug type headlights. The Rasheen is 4wd as well. and could be had with a small space saver spare wheel cover on the back just like a 'big' 4wd. They were all over Hokkaido, Japan when I was there in the mid 2000's. I have seen one in Australia and asked the owner to buy it (his Japanese wifes car) he couldn't work out why anyone would want it - but then they went to the trouble of importing it.

  • Wstarvingteacher Wstarvingteacher on Dec 16, 2014

    Well I like it but anyone who knows me knows I would prefer to drive a box. This is, indeed, a box.

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