Hmm, maybe a regional thing then, as I didn’t come across Ah-di-das til at least the late 80s
If not later.
I had to check my facts, and was surprised to learn that Peugeot’s presence in the US actually outlasted Renault’s. (1991 vs 1989) I guess my recollection was biased by knowing a couple people who had Renault Alliances and I’ve never even seen a Peugeot on the streets on this continent.
Renault did have a US-based manufacturing capability in the 80s, so maybe they were more popular for a time before collapsing faser than Peugeot, who just seems to have faded away.
I don’t agree with your nitpick. The process of transliterating “ダットサン” to “Dattosan” follows a rule-based process for rendering each character as one or more Roman letters, as follows:
ダ DA
ッ T
ト TO
サ SA
ン N
Yes.
Transliteration, as Floater pointed out, is a system that renders each character in the original writing system in a unique way in the target writing system.
This preserves information but does not necessarily convey the sound correctly.
Transcription is an attempt to render the sound of the original language in the target language, which can be problematic.
Having said that, “Datsun” is an unusual case, because it is the “English” pronunciation that is correct (it contains the English word “sun”), and the way it is written in Japanese is an attempt to render the English pronunciation in Japanese characters.