Heisei-born but crushes on Showa B110 Datsun Sunny!

In the 1960s, during a period of rapid economic growth when the passenger car market was rapidly expanding, Nissan’s first generation Datsun “Sunny” was the model that contributed to the popularization of car culture. The second generation B110 model Sunny opened the curtain on the personal car boom and made the term “family car” more familiar. The person who fell in love with the Datsun Sunny at first sight and welcomed it as his favorite car is Yuuki Fujimura, who was born in the Heisei era and is now 33 years old. We asked him what kind of old car life he is leading with the popular car of the Showa era.

His rival car at the time was the Toyota Corolla

The second-generation B110 Datsun Sunny attracted a lot of attention when its commercials used the catchphrase “The car next to me looks smaller” to emphasize that it was a more affluent car than its rivals. This “car next door” refers to the Toyota Corolla, which was a rival car at the time, but it was the presence of this rival that allowed the Sunny and Corolla to evolve for the better, and the repeated model changes, with both sides being aware of each other, contributed to creating the foundation of what a popular car should be for the next generation. This contributed to the creation of the foundation of what a mass-market car should be for the next generation.

Yuuki Fujimura, the owner of the second-generation B110 Sunny introduced here, was born in the Heisei era and is now 33 years old. He has driven the Honda EF Civic, EK Civic, BMW 3 Series, etc. because of his love of driving.

He has never had much contact with old cars, both in terms of age and car history, but he has always been interested in them and has always wanted to add old cars to his car history someday. Then, by chance, he came across a B110 Datsun Sunny that had been traded in at a local car shop. He fell in love at first sight with the looks of a popular car of the Showa era and decided to trade in his BMW 3 series for it and buy it immediately. </p

What are the key points of modification that you believe in not to tinker too much?

Despite the fact that the car’s model year is more than 20 years before Mr. Fujimura was born, thanks to the previous owner’s careful maintenance work, there is little damage and the internal combustion system including the engine, drive system, suspension, etc. are all in good condition with no problems at all. He has already owned the car for two years, but he has not encountered any major problems and is enjoying a very rich old car life.

When he first bought the car, he wanted to keep it as original as possible, but as he looked at it every day, he gradually began to enjoy tinkering with it, thinking of how he could make it more like a race car, or how he could make it a little more like a race car. However, he decided to enjoy tuning the old car to the extent that he could return it to stock as a light modification, as he did not want to overdo it.

translated by DeepL