Honda, Nissan, and Mitsubishi recently started merger talks that would make the combined company the third-largest automaker in the world behind Volkswagen and Toyota, but Nissan’s corporate history is already quite complex. The company produced its first car in 1914, calling it the DAT after the last initials of the company’s three founders. The first DAT truck was built in 1918 for the Japanese Army, although the end of World War I forced DAT to shift its focus back to passenger cars. The company changed its name to Datson – or “Son of Dat” — in 1931, and the spelling was changed to Datsun in 1933. That same year, parent company Nihon Sangyo began using the ticker symbol NISSAN on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
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Datsun came to the United States in 1958, and in 1984 began a costly global effort to rebrand all its models and dealerships under the Nissan name. Nissan resurrected Datsun in 2014 for use on cheaper models in limited markets across Asia and Africa, but dumped the name again in 2022. In its heyday, the Datsun label went on magnificent sports cars like the 240Z and the earliest generations of the iconic Skyline, as well as some truly gorgeous pickup trucks.
