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Nissan History in relation to Datsun 1200
* For a longer history of Datsun, see History * For a list of Datsuns, see Model names
Nissan was incorporated in the 1934 and from day one owned the Datsun name. But Nissan mostly made trucks until the late 50s (previously trucks were nearly all of the japanese market). In the late 70s Nissan managment in all its wisdom decided to 'leverage' the Nissan name and tossed the Datsun brand name in the trashcan. The name drop was complete in 1984. There is some evidence this was a bad move ...
After 1984 the Datsun name was used for a JDM line of pickup trucks, up to around 2002 or so.Datsun Truck
The name "nissan" was the stock market symbol for the zaibatsu (combine) holding company's name: Nippon Sangyo (translation: Japan Industries). In 1934 Nippon Sangyo created Nissan by merging some of its holdings together. The Datsun name is earlier still, having been the "2nd gen" product of DAT Motors (the renamed Kaishinsha company), one of the two original auto manufacturers licensed in Japan in 1911.
Nissan was created by merging Tobata Casting (auto parts) with DAT Motors (car maker). At the same time DAT's factory was sold to Isuzu. DAT had earlier merged with Jitsuyo Motors which was a Kubota company. These were all small-scale companies: Jitsuyo only made 450 cars over seven years, and DAT only made 10 Datsuns in 1931-1932.
Interestingly, during WWII, Nippon Sangyo involved 74 companies including Hitachi. The "new zaibatsu" Nippon Sangyo grew so big during the war that it surpassed the traditional zaibatsus of Mitsui and Mitsubishi. Note that zaibatsus were officially dissolved after the war by the Occupation forces, but ties between related companies still survive. Hence Nissan still relies heavily on Hitachi parts, while Toyota favors Nippon Denso.
The Prince merger in 1966 was the partial result of Japanese government encouragment of mergers in the auto industry in the 1960s. However, this was the only merger that occured due to that campaign. Most likely Nissan chose to merge with Prince to get access to Prince's Murayama factory, as Nissan was expanding faster than anticpated by the mid-60s and even though they had just opened the state-of-the art Zama factory, they needed even more capacity to fulfill the demand of Datsun sales.
One other fascinating fact is how Nissan invested in Fuji Heavy Industries stock. In turn this led to the assembly of Datsun 1200s in the Subaru factory. It is well known that the B10s (Datsun 1000s) were made in Nissan's Zama plant, but "beginning in 1970", 100,000 Sunnys were made in Fuji factories. I don't know at what point this stopped however.