Nissan’s history is as colourful as they come and it all started with a car called DAT in 1914; the name was an acronym of the company’s investors’ family names – Den, Aoyama and Takeuchi.
The company went through the usual mill of business partnerships and corporate ownerships before it evolved to what we know it today as Nissan Motor Company.
Nissan museum
Nissan also decided to re-launch the Datsun brand that’s targeted at emerging markets; this was announced in mid-2013 followed by the world premiere of the Datsun GO in Indonesia in September that year.
The new Datsun range has since grown to four with the GO+, on-DO and mi-DO and it is marketed in India, Russia and South Africa, besides Indonesia.
The Datsun brand is more familiar to Malaysians as it was the name used to promote its models from the 1960s, during which it established itself as good fuel economy cars like the Datsun 1200, 120Y and 130Y, and racy sedans like the Datsun 1600 SSS and 240Z sports car.
Nissan heritage cars from the 1930s.
Initially, the name started as Datson (Son of DAT) in 1931 but when Nissan took over the company in 1933, it was changed to Datsun (with the last syllable referring to the sun) as ‘son’ was viewed in a negative light since it means ‘loss’ in Japanese.
During those early days, the small car range carried the Datsun name while the bigger cars had the Nissan name, which was an abbreviation for Nihon Sangyo, the holding company.
It was in 1982 that this carmaker chose to use the Nissan name for its entire range of cars, that is, until 2013 although technically, Datsun is now another brand like Infiniti under the Nissan Motor Company group.
During the recent Nissan 360 Asia & Oceania media tour, taking a walk down the Zama Heritage Collection hall was a stroll down Nissan’s history with the display of more than 450 vehicles, including motor sport cars, dating back to the early years.
It was also an amble down memory lane for us although our visit to the Zama premises in 1984 was to see the assembly process of the Nissan Langley, which was introduced to our market shortly after.
Shimoida showing the high energy density battery pack of an electric vehicle.
At that time, the Zama factory was the pride of Japan with its automated facilities and hosted visits by leaders from other countries; while it started as a production facility for commercial vehicles, it also built the Sunny and other compact car models.
Today, apart from the Zama Heritage Collection hall, the Zama factory is also a lithium-ion battery plant that has produced more than 11 million batteries, about half of the world’s global production.
Our visit here was all too short as there were so many questions to ask of our guide Torchi Hara, a veteran Nissan staff.
Among the impressive array of cars were examples from the Austin Motor Company collaboration (1937-1960s) and Prince Motor Company merger in 1966.
There were also two cars in the collection that never made it to the showroom; this was the Nissan MID 4 3.0-litre prototype that was deemed too expensive to be sold and Nissan Hypermini electric car developed in 2000.
Nissan actually built its first EV (electric vehicle) in 1947 in the form of a mini-truck called Tama; it had a cruising range of 65km.
The amazing thing is that 70% of the cars are said to be still driveable and the vehicles selected for special events, like the Nismo Festival, are duly prepared to be driven.
Nissan’s passion for making sports cars was clear when it introduced the first Skyline GT-R in 1969.
Likewise, the 240Z that was launched to take on the Porsches; in that respect, Nissan felt it had done well because the 240Z could match the German sports car in performance at half the vehicle price.
In the current age, Nissan continues with its passion for making cars that pander to all and sundry, while doing its part in environmental motoring with the LEAF that was introduced in 2009 and is now into its second generation (more than 195,000 LEAFs were sold as of September 2015).
Nissan Skyline (left) and a Z car.
Yes,this carmaker is part of the Renault-Nissan Alliance, a unique collaboration that was entered into in late March 1999 when Nissan ran into severe financial difficulties, but Nissan is extremely proud to state its standing as a Japanese company with its distinct corporate culture and brand identity.
From the media perspective, this alliance brought one significant development; most Nissan senior executives could now communicate fluently in English, probably to engage with the CEO Carlos Ghosn who also helms Renault.
This saved the hassle of product and event presentations taking too much time with speeches being translated to English, a prevailing scenario in other Japanese car companies.
In the past, Nissan also showed its willingness to collaborate with other car companies, among them Volkswagen, Alfa Romeo, Ford Motor Company and General Motors.
A more recent development is a Russian joint venture, along with partner Renault, which seeks a gradual controlling stake in AvtoVAZ that owns Russia’s biggest selling brand Lada.
It also develops mini cars for the Japanese market with Mitsubishi Motors that are built at the latter’s plant in Mizushima.
And Mercedes-Benz, which took a 3.9% stake in the Alliance through a share swap, is developing a pick-up based on the new NP300 Navara.
Looking to the future, the IDS Concept subscribes to the autonomous drive trend that is sweeping the global automotive industry and Nissan has its own interpretation of how to go about it.
Nissan Museum guide Torchi Hara is a veteran Nissan staff.
A peek into the near future was provided at the Nissan Advanced Technical Centre (NATC) nestled among the hills in Atsugi.
Apparently, this R&D facility is not often open to media visits and we were among the fortunate few.
The focus was on battery development and a dashboard that transforms according to how the car is driven as part of the Nissan Intelligent Driving concepts.
Yoshio Shimoida, the deputy general manager of the EV and HEV Engineering Division, gave a brief on the high energy density roadmap in battery development.
He explained how they could provide a higher density battery stack for the new Leaf by improving on the old, which he said had operated reliably over the years.
The NATC also uses its staff LEAF cars to power some of its facility’s electrical needs to reduce expenses and six were ‘hooked’ up during our visit.
This is just one aspect of Nissan’s future ambitions and this carmaker is clearly ready to move in should autonomous driving become the norm in the not-too-distant future.
Keyword: Nissan - A historic journey