Why did Datsun change to Nissan?
I understand that the company has used both names in different ways since its inception (if anybody wants to clear up that aspect of the question, please do so). My question is, why did they start marketing the cars in the U.S. as Nissan instead of Datsun? What marketing forces helped them decide to do this?
Sorry if this isn’t what you had in mind (no cites, hard evidence, etc), but when the first cars were introduced, the name “Nissan” still carried some significant negitive conotations/associations with the American public. “Datsun” seemed a little more friendly and less “foreign”, specificly, Japanese. Wanting to move product, they used a different name. As time went on, attitudes changed and I imagine it was simply more conienient to use one name, globally, for the product line. Mitsubishi and Kawasaki had a rough time in this respect as well. Old-timers would yell, “Hell! I used to shoot those down in '44!”
Kinda like John Cougar. Record execs said no one would buy an album from a schmo named “Mellencamp”, so they packaged him as “Cougar” and off he went. As his popularity grew, he slowly integrated his real last name, and finally, dropped Cougar all together, hoping no one would notice.
Well, I noticed. And I think he’s a schmuck.
Isn’t Nissan owned by the French now anyway? (I’m too lazy to even check Yahoo! 
)
Nissan is not owned by a French company, but they do have an alliance with Renault.
http://www.nissan-global.com/EN/HOME/0,1305,SI9-LO3-MC92-IFN-CH120,00.html
Interestingly enough, years before the change to “Nissan”, one of their ad campaigns showed a fictitious couple who had won a trip to where the car had come from, and it was Muncie, Indiana. Presumably Datsun had some sort of office or plant there, and they came close to purporting that they were American cars.
Well, they’d be built in America wouldn’t they? I know that australian Toyotas, Mitsubishi etc are built in Australia.
The early 510’s used a Borg-Warner automatic transmission. They also advertised that the 510 was the car with a transmission from Muncie Indiana.
The car itself was built in Japan.
gatopescado has it basically right: concern over lingering anti-Japanese sentiment (both because of the war and because most products imported from Japan in the two decades after the war were perceived as cheap and flimsy) kept them from using the Nissan name when they introduced cars to the U.S. market in the early 1960s.
This page says:
The same site also explains where the Datsun name came from in the first place:
In the 1930s the company was acquired, then became independent again, and reformed under the name Nissan Motor Company Ltd.
The change back to Nissan for all products came in 1980.
True. But they used BOTH names on their cars (Datsun by Nissan) until 1984, until they dropped the Datsun and became Nissan totally and completely.
My Dad owned a Datsun/Nissan dealership.
Don’t blame him for this!
He was probably more bothered by being told to “change your name to something easier to sell” than you were. It was done entirely by the record companies & promoters, against his wishes. But they said they knew best, and he could either do it our way or we don’t produce your records.
He did indeed change back to using his real name as soon as he had sold enough records to have some pull with them.
No no. You have it all wrong. What happened was that when the company decided to sell their cars in the U.S., the president called up the marketing director and told him that he’d have to come up with a name for the line of cars. The marketing director asked when they needed the name by. The president, having waited until the last minute to address this issue, told the marketing director that they needed the name by the next morning. The marketing director, surprised, exclaimed “That soon!?” (Or, since he said it in a bad fake Japanese accent, “Datsoon!?”) The president loved it, and that’s how the cars came to be known as Datsuns.
Well, that was the story floating around the schoolyard, circa 1979. 
Renault owns 44% of Nissan, according to a Bloomberg story from yesterday, so it’s not far from having a majority stake in the company.
Also, Nissan super-hero CEO Carlos Ghosn is a former Renault exec who is scheduled to become CEO of Renault in 2005 while keeping its post with Nissan. Also, while Renault does own 44% of Nissan, Nissan also owns 15% of Renault, though those aren’t voting shares.
I thought Renault was a nationalized company…100% of shares owned by the government of France.
Nope. Until July 28 2003, the French government owned 25.91% of Renault. However, they sold a bunch of shares and now own 15.7%.
Carlos actually takes over the CEO post of both Renault and Nissan on April 1, 2004. Oddly enough, at the time of the first crossholding and Renault management takeover of Nissan, Nissan was on the verge of bankruptcy. Nowadays, Nissan is debt free and in a seriously much stronger position than Renault.
Carlso is a super-hero, although that didn’t prevent him from getting into a well publicized accident with a motor cycle a few months back. one of my colleagues is a good buddy of Carlos and was out drinking with him the night before. claimed that they sucked down quite an impressive amount of red wine. :eek: