Three men's initials
The oldest thread in the Nissan story is a small Tokyo workshop. Masujiro Hashimoto founded the Kwaishinsha Motor Car Works on 1 July 1911, and in 1914 it produced its first car. Nissan's own heritage pages say the car was named by combining the initials of three men who invested in the firm: Den, Aoyama and Takeuchi. DAT. The company went through several names, becoming DAT Motorcar Co. in 1925, and in 1926 it merged with the Osaka firm Jitsuyo Jidosha. That firm traced back to an American engineer, William R. Gorham, who had developed a three-wheeled vehicle in 1919.
Aikawa, Datsun and a date nobody agrees on
The name that mattered to Americans came next. DAT brought out a smaller car, the Datsun Type 11, in 1931. Nissan says the company changed its name to Datsun in 1932, with the last syllable swapped from son to sun because son sounded like a word meaning disadvantage in Japanese. Wikipedia places the change in 1933, after the Nissan group had taken control of DAT. The two accounts differ by a year, and neither page says why.
The corporate side has the same wobble. Yoshisuke Aikawa had founded Tobata Casting, and by 1928 he was president of Nihon Sangyo, the company that gave Nissan its name. Wikipedia lists a 1933 founding date and says the car company took the Jidosha-Seizo name that year; it also says Aikawa incorporated his auto parts division as Nissan Motor in 1934. Nissan's heritage page puts the corporate name change to Nissan Motor Co. in 1934. Treat the founding year as 1933 or 1934 depending on whose definition you pick.
Prince, and where the Skyline came from
The Skyline was not a Nissan idea. It came from the Prince Motor Company, which began as the Tachikawa Aircraft Company, a maker of airplanes for the Japanese Army in World War II. Prince built an electric car, the Tama, in 1946, and later the Skyline sedans that carry its name. In 1966 Prince became part of Nissan, and the Skyline name moved with it. The first car to carry the GT-R badge, the PGC10, was introduced on 4 February 1969, so the sports Skyline that Americans now chase is a Prince-bred car wearing a Nissan badge.
Mr. K and the American Datsun
Datsun entered the American market in 1958, with sales in California. Nissan then set up its own distribution subsidiary, Nissan Motor Corporation USA, in September 1960, and Yutaka Katayama was named vice president of the western region. He later served as the first president of the American company and is remembered as Mr. K. One detail collectors repeat: Nissan had wanted to call the Z car the Fairlady, its name in Japan, and Katayama introduced it in 1970 as the Datsun 240Z. The 240Z and the 510 are covered on their own Datsun pages here. Katayama's later years were less kind. After becoming chairman of the American company in 1975, he returned to Japan two years later and was moved to a minor subsidiary.
Datsun becomes Nissan
The name change is a good example of a fact that depends on what you count. Wikipedia's Datsun page says the decision to change the name in the United States was announced in the autumn of 1981. Another source says Nissan stopped using the Datsun name altogether in 1981 and puts the cost at several hundred million dollars. Wikipedia's Nissan page says Datsun was still the export brand until 1983 and was phased out in 1984, while its Datsun page says the Nissan name was given prominence in 1983 and some export markets saw both badges until 1986. A buyer will see all of this on cars: a 1982 or 1983 model can wear Datsun and Nissan badges depending on the model and where it was sold.
The Z cars, the GT-Rs and where it stands
The Z lineage runs through the Datsun 240Z to the Z31, introduced in Japan in September 1983 as the Fairlady Z, and then to the Z32 300ZX. The Z32 is the car with a model page on this site. Nissan stopped selling new Z cars in the United States after the 1996 model year, with the mid-1990s shift toward SUVs and a rising yen cited as reasons. The 350Z came back as a 2003 model, built after president Carlos Ghosn announced plans in February 2000 to produce it, and it was designed at Nissan Design America in San Diego.
The Skyline GT-R came back in 1989 after a sixteen year gap, as the R32. Group A versions won the Japanese Touring Car Championship four years in a row, and the Australian magazine Wheels nicknamed the car Godzilla in July 1989. The R34 followed in 1999. Neither was sold in the United States, which is the whole point of the American story, and it is covered below.
In 2013 Nissan formally brought back the Datsun name, nearly three decades after it was phased out. The 240Z and the 510 stay with Datsun, while the R32, R34, Z32 and 350Z sit under Nissan, which is how this site files them.
