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Datsun was a Japanese automobile manufacturer owned by Nissan, which began producing cars in 1931. Their name came from "Datson," a name chosen by the DAT Motorcar Co. to distinguish the size of its new small car from the larger DAT 41 already in production. [1] Hence, this car was the "son of DAT." In 1934, Nissan took over DAT and changed "Datson" to "Datsun" for two reasons: " son" in Japanese means "loss" and they wanted to honor the sun depicted on the Japanese national flag.

From 1958 to 1986, any Nissan vehicles that were exported were re-badged as "Datsun," hence why Datsun is well known internationally for the 510, Fairlady roadsters and the Z and ZX coupés. Nissan eventually phased out Datsun by 1986 but later relaunched the brand in June 2013. The brand would focus on making low-cost vehicles for emerging markets such as India, Indonesia, Russia and South Africa. Unfortunately, the company struggled with sales and Nissan considered phasing Datsun out in 2019 and 2020, eventually doing so in 2022.[2]

Vehicles[]

Midnight Club: Los Angeles[]

Logo History[]

The Datsun logo has gone through 12 different designs over its history. The first logo used the solid red circle found on the Japanese flag with a blue rectangle placed over it containing white lettering of the company name. This was the 1st, 2nd and final logo before the company become defunct the first time. The rest of the logos just contained the word "Datsun" in different fonts, sometimes enclosed in a border. The final logo in 2012 was designed to celebrate the brand's comeback and give it a more brutal, masculine feel. The logo kept the original shape of the first logo, with a circle in the middle and the rectangle with lettering inside. However, the new logo was enclosed in a massive silver frame. [3]

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Manufacturers in Midnight Club
Parent Companies General Motors · Stellantis
American Buick · Cadillac · Chevrolet · Chrysler · Dodge · Ford · GMC · Hummer · Hotmatch (Matt Hotch Designs) · Pontiac · Saleen · Scion · West Coast Choppers
European Aston Martin · Aprilia · Audi · BMW · Ducati · Gemballa · Lamborghini · Land Rover · Lotus · McLaren · Mercedes-Benz · Pagani · Volkswagen
Japanese Datsun · Honda · Infiniti · Lexus · Kawasaki · Mazda · Mitsubishi · Nissan · Toyota
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