Datsun
The history of Datsun is tied in mainly with the history of Nissan. The DAT Motorcar Company which built a Datson was taken over by Nissan in 1934, who changed the brand name of the cars from Datson to Datsun. Shortly after the takeover they started building Austin 7's under licence, on much improved production lines. The Datsun name was used for passenger cars produced while the Nissan brand was the name used on their trucks. Post war the cars built were still originally Austin products, and in time producing every component! During the 1950's the company decided to forge ahead with their own overhead camshaft engine designs. By 1958 with the the Datsun Bluebird, the company started what would become a huge export drive. And as import duties and taxes rose Nissan started building factories in the market countries (as did other Japanese manufacturers).
The Datsun name was used on the cars that were exported from Japan. Datsun cars started to be sold into the USA from 1958 and sold into Europe from 1962. Nissan decided to change their passenger car brand name from Datsun to Nissan starting in the early 1980's, supposedly to strengthen the Nissan brand worldwide, which eventually turned out to be a very costly rebranding exercise. The Datsun name was then brought back some 3 decades later in mid 2013 under the direction of Carlos Ghosn, whose restructuring of the company basically saved the future of Nissan.
