The story I heard was that the name Datsun was invented for the US market
in case the venture into the US failed. The Nissan company did not want
to have its name associated with a failure. Lost face, you know. I
guess by 1986 they figured it had turned out OK.
On Fri, 10 Nov 2006 23:19:54 -0500 "Rick Fisk" <refisk@chartermi.net>
writes:
> Before 1986 the brand name was plain old "Datsun". There were parts
> and
> pieces on the cars branded "Nissan", but the vehicles were Datsuns.
> Then
> they decided the US market was sophisticated enough to use the
> company's
> actual name. For 1986 they used "Datsun by Nissan". After that
> they
> dropped Datsun altogether and just used Nissan.
>
> BTW, Datsun was a made-up name for the US market.
>
> Rick
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