Eight million people sent in names before Nissan chose Sunny
In December 1965 Nissan asked the Japanese public to name its new small car by post. More than eight million entries arrived. Sunny had been suggested 3,105 times, and the company's founder, Yoshisuke Ayukawa, announced the winner on 19 February 1966. The car it named kept rolling off Japanese lines until 2004.
The first Sunny went on sale in September 1966, exported as the Datsun 1000, with a 988 cc four-cylinder engine and a new small-car platform of its own. Its launch opened a rivalry with Toyota's Corolla. When Toyota gave the Corolla 1,100 cc and advertised the extra capacity, Nissan answered with a 1,200 cc second generation in January 1970 and a cheeky slogan: the car next to me looks small.
That second generation, sold abroad as the Datsun 1200, made a big mark overseas. No Japanese car had sold in real volume in Britain before it, with sales jumping from just over 6,000 in 1971 to more than 30,000 the following year and making Datsun the top Japanese car exporter there. North Americans bought over 133,000 across three model years, and the New York Yankees used one as a bullpen car. In 1973 the US Environmental Protection Agency rated it the most fuel-efficient car in the country at 28.7 miles per US gallon, though only because the Honda Civic had not yet been tested.
It was also a giant-killer in competition. On its debut at the Fuji 200-mile race in November 1970, a lone works car beat the Corolla-dominated field, and in Portugal it was popular enough in motorsport to get a one-make series. South Africa sold a pick-up version until emissions laws ended it in 2008, after more than 275,000 sales.
In North America later models became the Sentra, and in Mexico the car was known as the Tsuru, Japanese for crane. The Sunny name still appears in China and the Gulf states on a rebadged Almera.
Source: Nissan Sunny
