BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO NISSAN

What’s Nissan and when did it start making cars?

In 1911 a fellow called Masujiro Hashimoto started a company in Japan called Kwaishinsha Motor Car Works, building its first car in 1914. That was called the DAT, based on the initials of the three main investors’ surnames.

The marque became DAT Motors by 1925, making trucks and cars. The 1931 Type 11 was a smaller car than it had built before, and termed a son of DAT, or Datson (tweaked to Datsun because ‘son’ sounds like a lot like a word for disadvantage in Japanese). DAT had meanwhile merged with Tobata Casting, later swallowed up by a holding company called Nihon Sangyo, founded by Yoshisuke Aikawa in 1928. Phew.

The Nissan Motor Co name was established in 1934, and the Datsun Type 15 was Japan’s first domestically mass produced car in 1937. Exports to the US began in 1958, and Nissan’s first foreign factory opened in Mexico in 1966. In 1984 the Nissan brand began