Sixty-five years ago today, My Fair Lady opened on Broadway. The play would go on for a run of 2,715 performances, and as the legend goes, in one of those performances, sometime in 1959, in the audience sat then Nissan president Katsuji Kawamata. He was so impressed with the performance that when the 1960 Datsun roadster was unveiled it became the first car to wear the badge Fairlady. The rest is history.
Over the years the Fairlady has become an icon of the JDM and JNC scenes. For good or for bad it’s Japan’s Corvette, the go-to car for the question when non-car people ask “What’s an example of a classic Japanese car?” and the prime example of an oddball JDM name. But there’s no denying the impact and influence the Fairlady has had, even if you think it’s overblown.
What’s does the Fairlady mean to you?
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