Are they any good? …was the question posed by the Australian magazine Modern Motor back in February 1961, when the country was faced with the imminent arrival of the first full scale Datsun imports from Japan. As with many countries, the UK included, Japanese imports were eyed with some suspicion initially and were seen as a great threat to the domestic car industries.
Many older people in the UK still hold this view simply because our own car industry slowly self destructed through the 1970’s and 1980’s. However, pretty much everywhere else in the world the respective domestic car industries survived the tidal wave of Japanese imports and most of these companies still manufacture cars to this day.
Back in the 1960’s Australia’s domestic car industry was nowhere near as large as ours so it was quite understandable that the new Japanese cars should be seen as a threat, especially when the Australian government had just hiked sales tax on new cars to 40%. Also, as the Modern Motor article discovered, the quality, standard equipment and prices of the new Datsuns were all highly competitive. As the writer sums up “At these prices, who today can afford to ignore these vehicles?” Check out the full article below…
