Today’s Nice Price or No Dice Datsun has its original upholstery, which is in a pattern that might make you uncomfortably dizzy. Let’s see if this well-kept coupe’s price is just as off-kilter.
Before we get started today, let’s talk a bit about the differences between a Water Bear and a WaterCar. The former is a colloquial term for the phylum of eight-limbed, segmented creatures, more formally known as Tardigrade. The latter was the builder of the 2010 WaterCar Python amphibious vehicle we looked at last Friday. Both the Water Bear and WaterCar can survive on land and sea; however, the Water Bear has even more tricks up its many tiny sleeves, as it can also survive on mountaintops, in deep ocean trenches, and, so some say, in outer space. The Python offered no such extra versatility beyond its modest amphibious ambitions, and as such, many of you found it hard-pressed to justify its $250,000 asking price. In the end, that proved too much for the Python to bear (see what I did there?), which saw it fall in a hefty 88% ‘No Dice’ loss.
The Silvia path
The 1970s saw an explosion of Japanese cars and trucks hitting the North American market. Many, like Honda’s innovative Civic, cut their own path to success. Others chose a safer route, mimicking a successful American model, such as the Toyota Celica’s smaller-but-similar pony-car approach, which saw Mustang owners do a wide-eyed double-take when first seeing its liftback model.
So successful was the Celica in the U.S. that Toyota handed the responsibility for the second generation’s styling to CALTY, the company’s California-based design studio. The Celica’s solid sales also meant the category soon became crowded with competitors from other car makers looking for a slice of that sweet sales pie. From Honda, we got the Prelude, and from Datsun (now Nissan), we received the 200SX, called the Silvia in its home market. The following two decades proved a heyday for the Japanese coupe market, with models appearing in both smaller and larger than Celica size. The form factor’s popularity ebbed in the 1990s, as the market shifted toward SUVs and the crossover craze.
Seventies Styling
This 1978 Datsun 200SX is claimed to have a mere 62,500 miles on the clock, and to have been garage-kept the entire time it wasn’t out racking up those meager miles. It is thus in pretty sweet shape for its advanced age and ’70s-era plastics.
The styling of this first-generation 200SX is pretty wild, with broad sail panel rear fenders encroached by comically long wrap-around tail lamps. An ornate nose, lots of fiddly chrome, and bumpers capped with weirdly large rubber corner pieces like on a shopping cart add to the styling’s excesses.
It’s in the interior, though, where things get really crazy. The dashboard is fairly sedate, featuring a wide, swooping instrument binnacle with a full set of gauges. Below that in the center are the climate controls (no A/C here) and the radio, all ahead of the T-handle shifter for the car’s three-speed automatic. The seats, however, really let their freak flag fly. Their pattern is a simple black-and-white plaid, but the various angles in which it has been employed create a dizzying effect. It’s sort of like Porsche’s Pascha pattern, only not as elegant or cohesive.
It’s hard to believe that the county that gave us the calm simplicity of the Zen Garden and the compartmentalized comfort of the Bento Box lunch could have also created an interior made out of pure chaos, but here we are.
A survivor
Discounting the seventies styling for a moment and just focusing on the car’s condition, we’re presented with a mixed bag. That ruby-red paint job is not the car’s original. As evidenced by the under-spray on the doorjambs and under the hood, it may have even been an Earl of Scheib job. That’s not a big deal as long as the doors and hood are closed and the paint job looks otherwise OK in the pictures.
More important than the paint, all of the car’s trim and accessories appear to be intact. Finding something like a tail lamp lens or the plastic piece that fills the space where the home market bumper fits would likely be a fool’s errand. This 200SX seems to need nothing along those lines.
Power here is provided by an L20B inline four. That SOHC 1952cc engine made 97 horsepower and 102 pound-feet of torque when fitted to U.S.-market cars. As noted, that’s backed up by a three-speed automatic, driving a live axle on coils out back. The seller doesn’t give us much to go on in the car’s description, but does warn that it “could use a tune-up.”
A yen for this Datsun
An outstanding need for a tune-up notwithstanding, there’s not much wrong here. The title is clean, and the car presents well in the ad. Plus, there’s that Rorschach test of an interior to delight and/or frighten unsuspecting passengers. Finally, when was the last time anyone saw a first-generation 200SX on the road, much less one in this nice of condition and with so few miles? Could that all be worth the car’s $6,800 asking price?
What do you say? Is that a deal for this survivor Datsun? Or, all things being considered, is that $6,800 just as crazy as the seats?
You decide!
Nice Price or No Dice:
Facebook Marketplace out of Aurora, Oregon, or go here if the ad disappears.
H/T to Whatsupdohc for the hookup!
Help me out with NPOND. Contact me at [email protected] and send a fixed-price tip. Remember to include your commenter handle.
