The Datsun DC-3 is a 2-door roadster from Datsun, built from 1952, at the height of the post-war boom. Under the bonnet: 860 . Yuichi Ōta drew it.
How it came about
The Datsun DC-3 was a lightweight automobile produced by Nissan and sold under the Datsun brand in 1952.
The series was a predecessor to the Fairlady sports cars, and succeeded the pre-war Road Star. It was powered by the 860 cc Nissan D10 straight-four engine which produced 20 hp (15 kW) and could propel the DC-3 to 70 km/h (43 mph). The side badges read "Datsun 20" (20 meaning 20PS). Leaf springs were used in the suspension, and a three-speed manual transmission was specified. Four people could ride in the DC-3. Only 50 DC-3s were ever built; of these, 30 were sold (the remaining cars were converted back into trucks). A variant of the DC-3 was the Datsun 5147 pickup. According to Masahiro Sekiguchi in their book, "Nissan engineers: The men who took on the Fairlady", the project was originally started by Yamagishi Mitsutake, who worked in Nissan's technical department at their Yoshiwara plant. It's said that Mitsutake had grown unsatisfied with the company's post war direction of only manufacturing trucks. As a result, he began quietly working on this project, taking inspiration from Britain's MG sports cars when designing the body. The frame came from a Datsun truck, as did the running gear. Yamagishi Mitsutake died in a traffic accident before the project was finished; soon afterwards, when the project was discovered, development was taken over by Nissan engineer Shoichi Shidei and designer Yuichi Ota. They made substantial changes to the prototype, such as flipping the frame upside down to lower the ride height, and using sandbags to calculate the cars weight distribu
The hardware
Power comes from 860 . It weighs 750 kg. It shifts through a 3-speed manual. The layout matters: a front engine drives the rear wheels, the classic proportion — long bonnet, cabin set back — that most people picture when they picture a sports saloon or a grand tourer. The wheelbase is 2150 mm. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Family and rivals
Its family tree is legible: it took over from the Datsun Road Star; its successor was the Datsun S211; assembly was at Kanagawa-ku, Yokohama (Yokohama Plant), Japan. Its contemporaries in the catalogue — the Cadillac Eldorado, the Chevrolet Corvette, the Toyota Land Cruiser — show what else the money bought that year. Its Datsun stablemates include the 280Zx and the 310.
What it costs now
There is no federal ownership record for the Datsun DC-3 — it predates the complaint database or was never sold in the United States — so MotorJury publishes no running-cost figure for it. For a car of this age the price is set by the collector market and the condition of the individual example, not by a formula.