1976 Brochure

Courtesy of the Sportwagon's previous owner, who kept one of these perfectly preserved.

It's all mine, er, ours now

I haven't posted about this before because I didn't want to risk having the whole thing blow up in my face ... but the 1976 Sportwagon from Portland is now sitting in my driveway.

Bryan Thompson won the eBay auction, and I emailed congratulations to him within minutes, offering to buy the car if he didn't want it at some point. As it turned out, he only wanted it to take a vacation trip down the coast from Portland to San Diego and was planning to sell it when he got home. So we agreed that I would buy the car from him, with Bryan cutting his trip just a bit short to drop the Sportwagon off here in Silicon Valley.

Unfortunately, Bryan had some work commitments come up, and I stepped in and arranged to have the car shipped directly to me. At about noon today, Rick Watkins (a uShip.com transporter) pulled up and rolled Laverne's car off the trailer.

I noticed a couple of things not readily apparent in the eBay photos; a little door ding on the passenger side and the rather nastily chewed up panel under the front bumper. Other than that, though, this is an incredibly clean car. Like in the hatchback, the radio is hopelessly broken, but everything else seems to be as advertised. It runs beautifully and looks very cool as a little red wagon.

Pictures will be coming later, and I've got some hard decisions to make about other cars, but this is a great day!

Bryan Thompson for the win!

Well, that beautfiully maintained one-owner 1976 Sportwagon that sold on eBay several weeks ago for $3,250 got turned around quickly by its new owner, another used car place in Portland. After offering it up in late July and not having the reserve met (highest bid of $4,250), the seller relisted it with a lower reserve price:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Datsun-Vintage-Nissan-F-10-Wagon-Rare-Datsun-F10-1-owner-GAS-CRISIS-TIME-WARP-survivor_W0QQcmdZViewItemQQcategoryZ6188QQihZ006QQitemZ160268019404QQrdZ1QQsspagenameZWDVW

It had been sitting at around $3,050 for several days until the final minute on Sunday when the snipers went to work. First, someone knocked in a bid for $5,000.01, then Nissan Design's Bryan Thompson bid $5,100.01 with just 30 seconds left, winning the auction at the wire. It figures it would be him ... how many sane people want Datsun F10s, anyway?

He told me via email that he's planning to take a leisurely drive down the coast from Portland with his new beauty. Congratulations, you lucky dog.

32 years ago this month

In July of 1976, as the Bicentennial was being celebrated around the country, I was a kid in junior high in Ewa Beach, Hawaii. I don't think I was reading car magazines at that point, and I definitely don't remember reading in Car and Driver or Road & Track about the new front-wheel drive Datsun, the F10. In fact, the first time I realized there was an F10 was when I saw the late "Queen Henry Charles" in the used car lot at Joe Gibson Ford in Greenville, Texas, in 1980.

Sitting in the Texas sun evidently caused a major outgassing of volatile organic compounds from the interior plastics, so I have an indelible memory of opening the door and sitting down in that red 1977 hatchback for the first time. The smell of the warm plastic is as clear in my mind as if it happened yesterday. Compared to the comparatively more primitive (and considerably oldleer and more worn) 1972 Toyota Corolla S5 I'd had previously, the F10 seemed nearly new and from a different era.

It's illuminating to read these contemporary reviews that point out that the F10 has "280Z handling for a B-210 price", or note that it's braking performance was on par with the all-new Porsche 924 tested in the same issues. Everybody was slow back then, and the F10 was, relatively speaking, not a terrible performer for the day.

And of course I had to laugh at the complaints about the shifter; Queen Henry Charles was definitely a "bag of gears" that you had to shift by precise lever placement and prayers to the appropriate deities. Tanya tried driving it once and gave up after a couple of miles in disgust. I thought I just had an extra-sloppy linkage, but evidently they all were like that to at least some extent. (Arnelle doesn't seem as bad as I remember Henry being, though.)

Datsun F10: Overstyled but not overexciting

Datsun Makes a Minicar

How slow?

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F10 vs. F-10

Since the time the car arrived in the U.S., it seems like some people refer to the F10 as the "F-10". How did it get the hyphen when the badges on the car, the owner's manual and the service manual all have the name without a hyphen?

Well, the original sales brochure and print campaign for the car have it with the hyphen. That's undoubtedly the root of the confusion. Check it out:




Was it confusion caused by the brochure and ads being produced in the U.S. and the rest in Japan? Did Nissan change the name at the last minute, after the brochure had been printed and ads already placed in magazines? (Doubtful, given the lead times necessary to design and make trim parts for the cars.) Since this kind of thing is catnip for me, I'm going to keep looking for a definitive answer.

One possible explanation for how F-10 came about: The car the rest of the world got was the related but slightly smaller Cherry 120A F-II and 100A F-II. The F-II meant second generation, as the F10 followed the E10. It's not too big a stretch to imagine someone conflating F-II, F10 and, maybe, fighter plane nomenclature as well to come up with the hyphenated F-10.

Tires and wheels

According to my handy 1976 service manual, U.S.-bound F10s wore 155-80-13 tires on 4-1/2J wheels with a 40 mm offset. Hatchbacks came standard with 165-70-13s, but if I read the manual right you could evidently de-option to use the 155s. Why anybody would do that is a mystery to me. Of course, Arnelle arrived on 155s that were rock hard after sitting for some number of years of Arizona sun and squealed unmercifully around anything but the slowest corners.

Now, these two stock sizes are significantly different in diameter. According to the Miata.net tire calculator, the 165 is about 0.7 inches smaller, which yields a nearly 3% speedometer error. Presumably, Nissan figured they were okay as long as you weren't going any faster than the speedo says, so I'm guessing the calibration is for 155-80-13 tires. (Could they have had two different speedo gears? Yes, but I seriously doubt it. And if they'd calibrated for 165s the speed would read lower than actual with 155s, which is not the direction you want errors to go.)

The bolt pattern is the now uncommon 4 x 114.3 mm, or 4 x 4-1/2 inches. At one point, I onsidered a hub conversion to give myself more options, but decided instead to see what I could find. Minilites? Something interesting from the 70s?

While browsing eBay a few weeks ago, I found what I was looking for: A set of 15 x 6-1/2J wheels with dual 4 x 100 and 4 x 114.3 bolt patterns. These wheels, in fact:

They have a resolutely un-metric 38 mm offset, but that's close enough to 40 as to not matter. A set of four from Discount Tire Direct was under $300 with free shipping, so I jumped on them.

A quick test fit of a bare wheel on the rear worked fine, so I went over to the local America's Tire and bought a Kumho Ecsta AST in a 205-50-15 size. That's about a half inch larger in diameter, but it looks like there's room. I only bought the one though, to lessen my humiliation if I have to turn around and sell all this stuff because it won't fit ... nothing to do but get out the floor jack and see.

1/7/9 UPDATE: They fit on all four corners, completely filling the wheel wells, but with no interference with anything, at least on the Sportwagon. Pictures to follow when I get a chance, but if I had to do it over again I might look for 15x6 wheels instead. The speedo has no noticeable amount of error, but I think the extra unsprung weight is finishing off the 30-year-old CV joints ... I can hear them clicking on high-G turns. Maybe it was just their time.

What a beauty

Take a look at this gorgeous 1976 Sportwagon, which sold on eBay for $3,250 about a week ago. It is practically the definition of mint and original, and best of all the seller has a website with a ton of pictures:

http://www.curtscashcorner.com/1976_datsun_f10.htm

For me, the picture of the engine bay not butchered by a dealer-installed A/C is the big prize, as are the shots of original-looking interior bits. Whoever bought this car, I hope you take care of it.

Pictures

Here are some pictures of "Arnelle", taken by the previous owner, Nissan Design's Bryan Thompson, before she had her driver's side crunched:

Bryan certainly knows how to make someone want to buy a car, doesn't he? It worked, although Arnelle is not as pristine up close as these pictures make her look.

Introducing the F10 Project

Greetings everybody, although I doubt anybody is reading. This blog will chronicle the restoration of my 1976 Datsun F10 hatchback in particular, and be dedicated to remembering this generation of Datsun front-wheel drive cars in general.

Often remembered as simply an ugly, unpleasant car, it is to me a rather attractive, light and flingable piece with some innovative features. The fact that I had one (a red 1977 hatchback) 25 years ago when my wife and I were dating in high school has nothing to do with my happy memories of it, I assure you. :-)

I don't know how often I'll post, or where all of this will go, but my love for automotive history and this car in particular makes me want to try to record what I can for posterity.

Should you have your own F10 memories, or better yet, parts or cars you might like to sell, please email me at camr187@yahoo.com. I'd love to hear from you.