Reply #19: Are Nissans still rust buckets? Or has Nissan started to use real steel? [View All]

[happyslug]

I am sorry, but the last Nissan my family owned was a 1970 Datsun pickup. The Engine ran good, no problem with the transmission, the body just rusted out after about three years (and after five years, the body was completely gone, even through my family sanded off the rust, replaced the missing steel with Bondo). When I helped redo the truck I could see the double layer of steel, a very thin high quality steel over a thicker but clearly inferior steel (And the overall thickness of the steel, both good and bad, was thinner then on American Cars of the time period). Thus my experience with Nissan is of a poor body with a good engine and transmission (Four Speed manual, like a transmission should be, one gear for each cylinder of the engine). Compared to the American Cars of the time period (early 1970s) the Datsun Pickups (the NAME Nissan used at that time to market its automobiles in the US) were rust buckets. No American Car of the time period rusted as fast as a Datsun of the early 1970s (By the late 1970s most Japanese car makers seem to have fixed the rust problem, but adding galvanized steel to the lower parts of the car, but I have always questioned Nissan, which was always a step behind the other Japanese car makers). I had access to several American cars of the time period, a 1966 Chevrolet Belair, a ten year old Pontiac Executive, a 1973 Chevrolet Malibu, a 1977 Chevrolet Suburban and NONE of them rusted as fast or as completely as that 1970 Datsun (I had a 1982 Chevrolet Pickup, that lasted ten years without any rust, but that is AFTER the introduction of Galvanized Steel to the lower parts of even American Cars by the Big Three). My point here is has Nissan improved their steel, like most other Japanese Car makers AND US Car makers or are they still making rust buckets?

I will NOT go into Nissan's Steels terrible history when it comes to Union, best shown in the 1954 Nissan Steel Strike. For more see the following (One of the problems with the net is a lack of data on "Unpopular" events prior to about 1990, the Nissan Strike of 1953 is one of them, for it signaled the destruction of Independent Unions in Japan (and they replacement by Company Unions). These sites go into the Strike and Nissans attitude to unions since, but are insufficient compared to what is available in libraries where you have access to detail data (and stories) from before 1990.

http://www.multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/issues/1983/10/nissan.html
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/1650/abrdjapaneselaborrelations.htm