But, the typical American car didn’t have fairly simple features such as a trip odometer and an adjustable steering wheel until a couple of decades later. I remember driving a '70s era Dodge Colt (actually a Mitsubishi of some sort) and marveling that a cheap little car like that had features that my '71 Dodge Charger lacked.
NIssan could make a much better car for that price! The 510 was a bit of a tin can… and just as safe!
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Senior year of high school, 1987, a buddy drove in to the parking lot in a 510. We were checking out this fine transport when he commented that he had to be careful with it, it had to last him through college. And I’ll be damned if it didn’t make it through all 4 years at Arizona State. We were all surprised that it even made the trip out there from LA.
Can we presume the car was an embarrassing heap by the time your buddy finished college?
But I guess if it served its purpose, that might just be good enough
The engine was nearly bulletproof… Maybe U-joints on the axle shafts may need replacing…Maybe a clutch.
But the cars were tough. The bodies, however, rusted like an old tin can if exposed to road salt. An LA based car driving to ASU, no question it would last 4 years. If he’d gone to school in the snowy north… It would have returned to the earth from which it came about graduation time!
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Some of the younger crowd probably know more about the 510’s than the much older crowd… The JDM racers love the little 510’s and have a pretty big following… I think they like to run them in the Time Attack Racing world…
And of course, no 510 would be complete without being LS swapped… 
It was an embarrassing heap by the time we finished high school. The brush marks from the green paint job were a downside, but we didn’t judge. The guy needed a car and that’s all that mattered.
I had a pretty nice car within my group of friends in '87. My car was a 77 Cutlass with faded paint. Lily got her mother’s Mark IV, also with faded paint and a tattered vinyl top. Eric had a B210 that he shared with his brother. Andy had a 66 Mustang with a power steering leak so bad his dad cut the belt off and had him drive it like that. Mike never did get the 460 to fit in his 63 Ranchero. Danny had 5 brothers and sisters and couldn’t afford a car, but Robin’s dad bought her a new Tercel for her birthday. Most of the others were sensible cars like a Corolla or the old family wagon. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
Exactly. We lost touch but I know the car made it through year 4 of college for him.
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For what it’s worth, my wife’s BMW has “gesture control” that more or less does that. I don’t use it, as I rarely drive her car and there’s minimal traffic here to focus on.
This predates the 510 model, but I recall the first Datsun radio ads from the mid-late '60s. Their slogan was, “It runs with a key and small change”, in order to emphasize that, in addition to being cheap to buy, it was also cheaper to run than the American cars of the day.
Wifes first car out of college was a Datsun 510. They were great cars mechanically, but they were rust buckets in just a few years (at least in the north). I LOVED that NapZ engine with it’s dual ignition (2 sparkplugs per cylinder). It was a very fast little car for its day.