Interesting Popular Science Article

[yellowdatsun]

Reading the back page of a recent Pop-Sci magazine, they did an analysis of "the most used words, or two word phrases, from the past 100+ years". This excluded normal use words, and only included "subjects" that had been discussed.

 

What I found interesting, is that out of the 67 words/subjects they could have chosen to show, of the possible astronomical amount available, "Datsun" was among them! Datsun first started appearing in the mid 60's, and disappeared around 1990 in their magazines.

[]2eDeYe]

Datsun, datsun, Datsun. :D

[FiveTenzo]

Someone told me that Datsun = devil.lol is this true?

[albyneau]

Someone told me that Datsun = devil.lol is this true?

 

As quoted from Datsunhistory.com

"The roots of Datsun go back as far as 1911. It was then that Masujiro Hashimoto, an American trained engineer, created Kwaishinsha Motors with the help of three investors. Hashimoto wasn't like most other early Japanese automobile inventors, he had the advantage of several years of study in New York under his belt. Hashimoto's dream was to build the first Japanese regular production automobile.

 

His first experimental car, completed in 1912, was not considered much of a success. The next real attempt was the 1914 prototype for the DAT model 31, which was met with much more enthusiasm. It was about this time that the company came up with the beginnings of the Datsun name.

 

The name comes, in part, from the names of the three original investors: Kenjiro D en who helped organize the original company, Rokuro A oyama a childhood friend, and Meitaro T akeuchi- a cousin of a former prime minister who helped arrange financing... hence the name DAT. Roughly translated it means "hare","fast rabbit", or "very fast" in Japanese, depending on whose translation you want to believe.

 

Ayukawa and William Gorham had been friends for years and had always dreamed of starting a truly Japanese automobile industry. With this in mind, William Gorham made a visit back to the US to recruit some American expertise to help teach the Japanese. While in Detroit, Gorham visited a recently closed Graham Paige plant. After consultation with Ayukawa, he arranged to purchase the production line from the factory, which was shipped to Japan and set up as the first production line in that country. Gorhams newly designed car, the Datson, was the first to roll off the new line. The Datson, like many other Gorham cars, was adopted widely by Japans taxi companies.

 

Unfortunately the name "Datson" sounds very similar to a Japanese word or phrase that means "to lose money", so the name was changed to the Datsun we've all come to know and love. Tobato Imono Co. came up with the name change to Dat-"sun" in order to use Japans rising sun motif for its emblems for the 1932 model year... and in a bizarre twist, as a way to use the "sun" name protect it from bad luck.(a hurricane had recently destroyed a newly completed factory). Datsun's would also adopt a rabbit as its hood ornament in reference to the "datto" translation. "

[ggzilla]

With a brand name that well known, it's no wonder they stopped using it.

 

The first Datsun brochure:

[Rhapakatui]

How appropriate. First introduced to the public, and already has one mismatched panel. Ratsun from the start.