60 years of Nissan in Australia: the Datsuns and Nissans we learned to drive in

Sixty years ago this year, Nissan’s story in Australia began – not as cars shipped in from Japan and sold on, but as vehicles built here, on local soil, by local hands, for Australian roads. That distinction is why more than 170 Nissan, Datsun, INFINITI and Prince vehicles – almost all privately owned – rolled into the company’s Mulgrave headquarters in Victoria for the brand’s 60th anniversary, parked bonnet to bonnet with the people who kept them running.

Some owners had driven from Sydney, others from Adelaide, just to show off a Patrol, a Skyline or a Z to strangers who understood exactly why it mattered.

The Bluebird that started it all

The badge first appeared on Australian roads in 1958, when two Datsun Bluebird 1000s entered the Mobilgas Round Australia Trial – one came home a class winner. Sir Lawrence Hartnett, widely credited as a founding figure of Australia’s car industry, saw the Bluebird P310 and secured Australian distribution rights in 1960. The local company was formally inaugurated in 1966, and since then more than 2 million Nissan and Datsun vehicles have been delivered to Australian customers.

For 16 of those years, many of those cars were genuinely made here. From 1976, Nissan built the 180B and 120Y locally, followed by the Pulsar, Gazelle, Skyline and Pintara, before local manufacturing ended in 1992. Everything since has been imported – a detail worth knowing for anyone chasing a classic with genuine local-build provenance.

The Patrol that crossed a desert

Few nameplates carry as much local history as the Nissan Patrol, sold here since the G60 arrived in 1961. In September 1962, explorer Reg Sprigg drove a Patrol G60 across the Simpson Desert, the first motorised crossing of its kind. The Patrol went on to win 15 consecutive Australian Off-Road Championship titles between 1983 and 1998, and more than 258,000 Patrols across five generations have found Australian homes since.

Every generation of Patrol was gathered together at Mulgrave, a feat Nissan Australia’s head of communications, Steve Coughlan, believed to be “a world first”.

Bathurst glory and rally wins

The R32 Nissan Skyline GT-R earned its place in Australian motoring memory with back-to-back Bathurst 1000 victories in 1991 and 1992, and examples ranging from the R32 through to the current R35 sat on display at Mulgrave. The Datsun 240Z, forerunner to today’s Nissan Z, won the Safari Rally in 1971, and the current Nissan Z Nismo still offers a manual transmission.

Alongside the Zs and GT-Rs sat a rare 1966 Silvia, immaculate 160- and GQ-series Patrols, a trio of early Prince Skylines, a first-generation Silvia and one of the few surviving Pulsar ET Turbos still on the road.

Why the owners mattered most

Nissan Australia managing director Steve Millette called the anniversary “a very important milestone for us”, adding the timing mattered because the brand is “on that transition point right now, completely renewing our portfolio.” He said the turnout of private owners made the day what it was. “We’ve got people driving from all over Australia to show us their GT-Rs and their Patrols and their Zs, so we felt it was a great opportunity to get everybody together.”

A Nissan Australia spokesperson put it more simply: “The gathering was a credit to the owners who bought these cars, kept them on the road, rebuilt them and brought them back.”

What is coming next

Nissan used the anniversary to give the public its first look at two future models – the next-generation Y63 Patrol and the Navara Pro Plug-in Hybrid (PHEV), a petrol-electric ute that charges from a plug. The Navara PHEV is listed on Nissan’s own site as arriving in 2027, alongside a new X-Trail and a mid-size electric vehicle (EV) SUV planned for the same year.

The renewal comes during a leaner period for the brand locally. Australian sales have fallen from 66,826 vehicles in 2016 to 19,212 to the end of September this year, down 33.3% on the same period last year – numbers that give extra weight to Millette’s talk of a “transition point”.

What to check before chasing a classic

We’d check build plates and import documentation against marque club records before paying a premium for genuine local-build status, since only cars from 1976 to 1992 qualify. Parts supply, rust history and matching-numbers documentation are the real headaches with any car this old, and clubs such as the Nissan Datsun Sports Owners Club and the Classic Skyline Club of Australia are the sensible first call. A pre-purchase inspection from a marque specialist remains the standard safeguard, and current new-car warranty and servicing terms are worth confirming directly with a dealer regardless of which generation catches your eye.

Standing in a car park full of Patrols that crossed a desert and Skylines that won Bathurst, the point Nissan was really making at Mulgrave is hard to miss. The badge means something here because owners kept it alive – one rebuilt gearbox, one long drive home, one Sunday polish at a time.