#Pulsar

There were precisely two generations of the Nissan Pulsar sold on North American shores, and we’ve covered the latter previously in an absolutely excellent NX Sportbak from 1988. Today’s Rare Ride is a final-year 1986 example of the first generation Pulsar, which wasn’t quite as versatile as its replacement in 1987.

This one’s as clean as they come.

The second-generation Nissan Pulsar NX (known as the Nissan EXA outside of North America) was a cheap, mildly sporty two-seater that never sold as well as the Honda CRX or even the Ford EXP. In this series, we’ve seen this Colorado ’87 and this California ’89, and now we have a rusty ’88 in the weeds at the edge of a Wisconsin yard.

Various companies and trade groups have discovered that focusing marketing effort on a short period of time can generate significant buzz, and thus potential increased sales. Discovery Channel has “Shark Week.” Restaurants in various cities have Local Dining weeks. New York hookers have Fleet Week.

TTAC, in the same clickbaity manner, has “Sorta Obscure Twentyish-Year-Old Japanese Hatchback Week.” I’m not sure if I can repeat this next year, but this week has brought very rough examples of oddball Isuzu and Mazda hatches. Today, however, I have a personal favorite that isn’t one busted balljoint from the scrapyard.

Last week, we began our occasional look back at the interesting cars I’ve been posting daily in our Classic and Collector Car forum. Maybe these cars aren’t quite worthy of the full Crapwagon treatment, so we call this the Forum ReCrap.

(To the 2 percent of our readers that are female, please recall that nearly all males — especially those who happen to love cars — are perpetually twelve years old, and thus still find toilet humor titillating.)

This week, the forum featured: an SUV from a tractor company; a modern shooting brake; a legendary FWD sports car that will likely be stolen; a Japanese-built, Italian-styled derivative of a Chevette; and a hatchback that was born from jets.

The Nissan Pulsar NX was a weird little two-seater sold in the US market for the 1983 through 1990 model years. Now, the coolest thing about the Pulsar NX was the Sportbak wagon-conversion option, available on the second-gen version, but I have yet to see a Sportbak in a junkyard. So far in this series, I’ve photographed this ’83, this ’87, and now today’s ’89.

We saw an ’83 Pulsar not long ago, but it wasn’t until later in the 80s that Nissan’s semi-sporty commuter got really weird. Yes, interchangeable rear body panels!

Just about the time Datsuns were getting Nissan badging, the suits at Nissan HQ decided that they needed a cheap sporty car to compete with the likes of the Honda CRX and (cringe) Ford EXP in the American marketplace. A little cutting and pasting on the Sentra and voila! Pulsar!

Despite being pretty rare nowadays, I can’t quite summon the inspiration to pound out a proper CC for this 1978 Datsun 310GX (Cherry/Pulsar). Seeing as it appeared three years after the first Golf, the general resemblance is not coincidental, especially the front grill, a virtual dead ringer. It has some historical significance, since it marked the light at the end of Nissan’s tunnel of bizarre styling. This 310 replaced the F-10, which we titled as “The Ugliest Car Ever?” Although this hatchback looked fairly conventional, the coupe still had vestiges of F-10 ness in its rear quarters.