A little-noticed anniversary - 50 years of the Datsun 1600
10/03/2017
Hardly anyone in this country has said a word about it, although this car, which celebrates its 50th birthday in 2017, may well have made a significant contribution to the acceptance of the Japanese car in this country. We are talking about the Datsun 510, which was sold in our part of the world as the Datsun 1600, but was also called the Bluebird by the Japanese. The Datsun 510 was presented at the Tokyo Motor Show in October 1967, which explains its round birthday.
Even my father, after more than 10 years of driving a Beetle, bought one of these cars, sprayed in ochre yellow. The car had four doors, a spacious trunk, a radio as standard and offered significantly better driving performance than the good Wolfsburg before. This was hardly surprising, as the four-cylinder engine with overhead camshafts produced 96 SAE hp and weighed just 910 kg. And it had a modern chassis with independent suspension all round. No wonder some called it the little BMW of Japan. The Datsun engineers had probably really studied the 1600-2 in detail, as there were certainly some striking parallels. The 510 was produced as a four-door saloon, estate and coupé, and not all variants made it to Central Europe.
Automobil Revue tested an early model in April 1968 and awarded it good marks. ADAC Motorwelt also tested one of the last Datsun 1600s in October 1972 and gave it a 0 to 100 km/h sprint time of 16 seconds and a top speed of 163 km/h. All this with low fuel consumption. And all this with a low fuel consumption of 10.1 liters per 100 km. However, the plastic seats and the poor cold-running characteristics did not convince the ADAC experts, but the extensive standard equipment did. And the price of DM 8890 was also acceptable. In Switzerland in 1968 it was still 9650 francs.
It was then also available as a 1300 and later with a 1.4-liter engine. And there was the 1600 SSS version, which also provided the basis for the first East African Safari Rally success for Datsun. In 1970, Edgar Herrmann and Hans Schüller won in the 130 hp Datsun 1600 SSS in Kampala, and a Datsun also finished in 2nd, 4th, 7th and 11th place. An impressive success!
The compact Datsun saloon (length 412 cm, width 156 cm, height 140 cm) also sold quite well, but was replaced as early as 1971 by its successor, the 160/180B (610 series), which was clearly more American in design.
It should also be noted that "our" Datsun 1600 did not live to be old; a head-on collision through no fault of its own sent it to the wrecking yard and the great-aunt to hospital. My father only bought something similarly nippy again a few years later, when I persuaded him to buy an Alfasud ...
P.S. More pictures of the Datsun 510/1600 can of course also be found in the picture archive on Zwischengas.
