From the Archives — Why Datsun Changed Its Name to Nissan

Shortly before I got married, it occurred to me that I needed to buy a car. But instead, I bought a Datsun.

My Dad knew a guy who knew a Datsun dealer who had a car for sale in my price range — a sickly-looking yellow Datsun B210 four-door sedan. (See the little yellow job in the back of this ad? That’s my car exactly — except without the rust and dents and missing pieces.) I knew nothing about cars, but I figured this guy was a friend of a friend of my Dad — surely he could be trusted. The price was $2,544. I put down $1,000 and borrowed the rest from a bank at 15.54% interest. Yes, you read that correctly. These were the Jimmy Carter years.

I picked up the car on Halloween, which should have warned me, I guess. It had a clutch, which made things interesting. The only clutching I’d done was at the car wash where I worked for two years during college. I used to drive the cars from the front of the line out into the parking lot for detailing. I’d never gone beyond first gear.

But first gear is the toughest, so I was soon on the road and on my way home. Of course, the gas tank was empty. After two miles, I pulled into a gas station. The attendant came out — this was way back when gas stations had attendants — in fact I actually worked as a gas station attendant for a time … Anyway, the attendant came out and said, “Sounds like you need a tune-up.”

Great. I’d owned the car for seven minutes and already it needed a tune-up. The car had a 30-day warranty, and during those 30 days I had to take it back to the dealer about 10 times.

I kept the car for about two years. Here’s a short list of adventures.

• The gas gauge quit working shortly after I bought it. From that time forward, I had to remember to reset the trip tachometer whenever I filled up. When the mileage got to 250, I filed the tank.
• The eject button on the cassette deck didn’t work. We carried a pair of needle-nose pliers in the glove compartment and used them to remove tapes.
• The bottom of both door panels had totally rusted out and been filled with Bondo, then repainted. The paint and Bondo began flaking off almost immediately.
• When I worked at the car wash, I got in the habit of leaving the driver’s door open and driving with my left foot hanging out of the car. This enabled me to get in and out a lot faster and made a lot of sense when pulling out of a wide car-wash door. It made no sense when backing out of the narrow garage at my house. I pulled out one afternoon and caught the edge of the car door on the side of the garage. The driver’s door folded back against the front quarter-panel and the window shattered. I bought a new window and installed it myself. Because the door was crumpled, the window wouldn’t open after that. It wouldn’t close either — there was a one-inch gap at the top.
• The front driver-side floorboard soon rusted out. One day when I was driving in the rain, my feet got wet. I decided that it was time to do something about the problem, so I fit a piece of plywood into the space. My Dad warned me that it could be dangerous — the exhaust might come in through the floor and asphyxiate me. I told him not to worry. Any exhaust that entered through the floor would exit through the window gap.

The most exciting adventure took place one winter when my wife and I drove the car to Arkansas. We left for the long drive home (about 14 hours at the 55-mph speed limit of those times) early on a Sunday morning. It was raining and cold as we drove through the dull and dirty Mississippi mudflats around Memphis. The rain and fog obscured everything, which is why I didn’t notice the steam coming out of my engine. I was about four miles north of West Memphis, Arkansas on Interstate 55 when the car died. I managed to pull over to the shoulder, but there we were, stuck in the rain in the middle of nowhere. We’d passed an exit about half a mile back, so that’s where we walked. We were drenched when we arrived at the closest of two gas stations. It had no repair facilities, so we walked under the highway bridge to the other station, a Shell. They had a tow truck and a mechanic, but they were in no hurry. We sat in the dirty chairs in the front room for two hours before the driver decided to help. We climbed into the cab of his truck with him and headed out for our car.

When our car finally made it back to the station. We sat in the front room for another two hours (during most of which time our car sat unattended in the dock). We finally got the news — our heater hose had split and all the water had drained out of the car. That, of course, caused the engine to overheat. It was a Sunday, remember, and the regular mechanic wasn’t on duty. We were given a choice. We could get a room at the local motel and have the regular guy fix it in the morning, or the genius on hand could plug the heater hose with a spark plug, fill the radiator with water,  and we could be on our way. We chose option #2, and for this (and the tow) we were charged $55.

When the “repairs” were finished, we climbed in with the “mechanic” as he took the car for a test drive on the frontage road. He decided to see how fast it would go and actually managed to get it up to 80. It was mid-afternoon before we got back on the road.

And it was still raining. We’d gone approximately 10 miles when the driver-side windshield-wiper blade — not just the rubber part, but the entire blade assembly — flew off and disappeared into the gathering dusk. I couldn’t see a thing. I managed to get to the next exit and pulled off the road. I got drenched all over again as I stepped out of the car and pulled the blade off the passenger side and stuck it on the driver side. This worked fine as far as clearing the windshield in front of the driver. However, the blade arm on the passenger side wore a grove into the windshield that was there for as long as we owned the car.

As dark descended, it continued raining and getting colder. (We had no heat. The hose was plugged with a spark plug, remember?) The windows were fogging up, and the only way to keep them clear was to open the passenger-side window. (The driver-side window wouldn’t open — or close — remember?) It wasn’t long before we were completely numb. We took turns driving, and whichever one of us was behind the wheel would alternate hands: one hand on the wheel and the other hand being warmed by the passenger. We struggled on in this fashion through northeastern Arkansas, the boot-heel of Missouri, and into Illinois.

By the time we reached Mattoon, we were frozen solid. We stopped at a restaurant to eat supper and bask in the warmth. We ordered hot chocolates, but before they arrived, I realized I didn’t have my keys. I ran out to the car and, sure enough, there they were, hanging from the ignition. I borrowed a hanger from a passer-by and ten cold and wet minutes later I got the door open and grabbed the keys. (Fortunately, the driver-side window didn’t close all the way.) I went back inside to my now-cold hot chocolate.

It was 9:00 pm, and we had ate least four more hours of driving ahead of us. I’d had enough. There was no way I was getting back on the road this night. We didn’t have much money, but we got a room at a Best Western. We slept the sleep of the dead and woke up somewhat refreshed. We ate breakfast at the McDonald’s next door and headed for home.

About 100 miles later, my wife realized she’d left her purse on the seat in the McDonald’s. We pulled off at the next exit and found a pay phone at a Stuckey’s. Amazingly, some honest person had found the purse and turned it in intact. Some kind soul took our address and mailed the purse to us. It arrived a few days later with nothing missing.

The ordeal had taken its toll on the car. Over the next few weeks, it became apparent that something was seriously wrong. A good friend of my father’s was an auto shop teacher in a small town in north-central Illinois. He offered to fix the car as a class project. It just so happened that he was attending a seminar my Dad was giving in Pontiac and was willing to drive the car home from there. I found a friend to follow me down and drive me home. When we got to my parents’ hotel, they were nowhere to be found. We sat around for an hour or so, but my friend had to be back home for an obligation, so we couldn’t wait any longer. I don’t remember why we didn’t go into the office and talk to the management about leaving the car and the keys. Instead, we climbed into my parents’ hotel room — in the middle of the day in the middle of Pontiac — through a partly-opened window and left the key with a note. It’s amazing that we didn’t spent the afternoon in jail, but nobody noticed us.

The rest of the story is short. My Dad’s mechanic friend picked up the car that night and drove it home. Before he arrived, the engine froze up and he had to drive the final 35 miles at a speed not greater than 14 mph. The overheating in West Memphis had torn the engine to bits and pieces of the pistons were floating around in the cylinders. The friend put in a totally rebuilt engine (which cost me $100), and from that time on, the car drove like a dream.

It drove like a dream, but it looked like a nightmare. Pieces continued to fall off regularly. I can still remember the day that the entire muffler/tailpipe assembly just dropped off without warning as we drove down a road near home. We finally decided to get rid of the car and took it to a Chevy dealer as a trade-in. The guy we were working with looked at it with a very frightened expression on his face. When he opened the hood and saw the pristine rebuilt engine, his look turned to one of absolute amazement. I don’t remember if he gave us any money for the wreck, but he did take it off our hands.

I think it’s fitting that, in the only photograph we have of this car, the hood is up, and one of my friends is repairing the head gasket. We had noticed it was leaking oil rather badly — it turns out that the person who had replaced the head gasket had missed one of the holes.