Tokyo police once chased speeders in a hand-built Nissan coupé
In December 1965 Nissan handed the Tokyo Metropolitan Police two Silvia CSP311 coupés for highway patrol. They became Japan's first high-performance police cars, picked because the Silvia was then the fastest production car in the country, with a 165 km/h top speed and disc brakes that stopped it well.
That first Silvia was almost entirely made by hand on the Fairlady platform, and only 554 were produced before production ended in 1968. It debuted at the September 1964 Tokyo Motor Show under the plain label Datsun Coupé 1500, driven by a 96 PS 1.6-litre engine with twin SU carburettors. Most stayed in Japan, though 49 went to Australia. Its roots ran through a cancelled sports-car project with Yamaha, known as A550X, and the designer Albrecht Goertz, creator of the BMW 507, who had consulted for Nissan until 1964.
The name went quiet until the S10 of the mid-1970s, the first mass-produced Silvia and the start of Nissan's compact rear-drive S platform. Sales were modest; many buyers chose Toyota's Celica, and leaf springs at the back made the handling poor. Even so, the actor Paul Newman raced a 1977 Datsun 200SX in IMSA Class C in 1978 and won 19 of 22 races.
The following S110 generation was meant to carry a Nissan-designed rotary engine, but the unit proved unreliable, so conventional piston engines went in instead; by coincidence the car shared its chassis code with Mazda's Cosmo, Japan's first rotary production car. To let separate dealer networks each have a version, Nissan also sold it as the Gazelle.
Rallying followed. Around 200 road-going 240RS coupés with a 2.4-litre twin-cam engine were built between 1983 and 1985 to qualify it for competition, and its best World Rally Championship result was second in New Zealand in 1983. Abroad, later Silvias were sold as the 200SX and 240SX.
Source: Nissan Silvia
