Autocar: Back off, Yanks, Nissan has British DNA

 

Austin A40 Somerset by Nissan

Austin A40 Somerset by Nissan

Did we tell you that no British paper would call the (so far nonexistent) fight between the current, China-built London taxi and the new one from Nissan a battle of the Asians? Because “Nissan has been adopted as a British company, and credited with the revival of the auto industry in the UK?” We sure did. England’s Autocar (that’s the world’s oldest buff-book for you) takes it much further. They say Nissan is as British as Austin.

Says the paper:

“The Fairway FX4 was born is 1958 as an Austin FX4, and if you compare its look with the gabardine raincoat meets American jukebox looks of Austin’s A50 Cambridge saloon of the era, the bloodlines are easy to see. And Nissan, or Datsun as it was then known, would have been building this very Austin under licence in Japan.

Datsun had first seen significant success as a car maker in the 1930s when it built Austin Sevens under licence, and struck a deal in 1952 that would see it licence-build Austin A50s from 1953-59 – the same era into which the FX4 was born.”

There you go. Autocar admits that the link is tangential, but insists that it is “a link nonetheless.”

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