You think your Skyline GT-R is so cool with your quad afterburners? Well the B210 Nissan Sunny Excellent came from the factory with six round taillights, and as a bonus you can call them sex (short for sextuple) afterburners. Whereas the standard Sunny came with a 1.2-liter A12, the Excellent borrowed the 1.4-liter A14 from the larger Nissan Violet. The Excellent was also slightly longer overall due to a longer front end. In Japan the nickname for this car was the Rocketto (rocket) Sunny for obvious reasons, and we’re still waiting for someone to import one and bring it to JCCS. Happy B210 Day from JNC!
It maybe a happy B210 day today – in the UK, Australia and NZ (New Zealand) it means 102, but when looking at the car’s history – given that it was also named as Datsun 120Y, meant that it was also an example of Nissan’s (Datsun’s) success stories in the British market when the latter had its (UK’s) automotive industry – at that time which contained domestic car manufacturers like the British Leyland (then BMC and later Austin Rover and Rover Group) concern and Chrysler UK (aka Chrysler Europe and Rootes Group before PSA Peugeot Citroen acquired and liquidated it in 1978) – plunging into declination.
Also the key to that (success in the UK) was because the 120Y’s technology had its roots being derived from Austin engineering, since most of the engineering found in Nissan’s cars had roots stretching from rebadged Austins, therefore references to it continued when Nissan acquired Prince in 1966 and Subaru in 1968 – ended in 1999 – while it (Nissan) even had established a short-lived partnership with Isuzu in 1970. (Similarly, Prince had its pre-Nissan products being based on Peugeot technology, Nissan too had such a deal with PSA when the latter supplied its diesel engines to the former’s second-generation March/Micra that was only available to Europe.)
And best of all, given that the recent fallout of Nissan’s merger with Honda may have connections with AR (Austin Rover) – hence the fact that Honda also partnered with the latter until 1994, then its quite an understanding that the 120Y was a certain Japanese car whose British connections have paved the way for Nissan to establish a manufacturing facility on UK soil – not only making Nissan to be the second Japanese carmaker to open a factory in the UK after Honda (via BL/AR with Triumph) but also the 120Y had emphasised the fact that Britain is was the only market in Europe and the world where Datsun (later Nissan) thrives… (Which is not a surprise that its one reason why Toyota faces critcisms in Britain and rest of Europe not because of blandness and/or lack of interest regarding of how its driven or seen.)