In one of those bizarre little events that occured in the early days of the car industry, a small number of Datsun 13s were built in Australia before the Second World War. Sadly, this grainy old pixelated photo is the only one I have of the last remaining Australian built Datsun 13 still in Australia. The Excelsior Body Works, a small coachbuilder in Melbourne, was run by a gentleman by the name of Mr. Whiteford. Mr. Whiteford had a plan, and that was that he would be the first person in Australia to introduce Japanese cars to the Australian market. The plan was that he would import rolling chassis of the new Datsun 13, and he would build the bodies himself here in Australia, which was a fairly common thing to do at the time, many other imported cars sold in Australia at the time had Australian built bodies. Mr. Whiteford placed an initial order for 24 rolling chassis, and in no time Nissan had built them and sent them on their way. It was an awesome plan, soon everyone in Australia would be driving Datsuns, and Mr. Whiteford would be a wealthy man, what could possibly go wrong ? Quite a lot as it turns out. The boat that was carrying Australia's first Datsuns made a quick stop in Singapore, where someone accidentally unloaded them. The ship had sailed long before someone asked "What's up with all these Japanese chassis sitting on the wharf?". (Or words to that effect) For reasons known only to the Singaporean harbour master, the 24 tiny Datsuns were placed in storage and were not sent on their way for another 12 months. To make matters worse, the monsoon season in Singapore was pretty bad that year, and the cars ended up completely submerged, they were so badly damaged that four of them were beyond repair.
Whilst all this was going on the Excellsior Body Works were hard at work building the new bodies to go on the Japanese built chassis. Nissan had supplied detailed drawings and plans for the Datsun 13, and being the craftsmen they were at Excellsior, the bodies were built precisely to the specifications supplied. Eventually, after such a long wait, the slightly rusty Datsun chassis arrived in Australia, and the first body was lowered onto the chassis, only to find that it did not fit. As it turned out, the dimensions Mr. Whiteford was given were "slightly incorrect", and much time and and considerable expense was wasted getting the ill fitting bodies to fit in place. Finally the first car was complete and ready to drive, except that the baby Datsun was almost impossible to steer. The rolling chassis for the cars were sent over, at the request of Mr. Whiteford, minus their tyres, battery and front transverse leaf spring, all of which would be supplied by a local manufacturer. The local spring works made springs that were nowhere near the specifications required, which caused all kinds of problems with the steering and handling. Excelsior ran into trouble trying to get the suspension sorted out and in July 1935 Nissan sent out an engineer called Kaoru Maeda, along with two fully assembled Datsun 13s, to assist. Eventually the spring problems were sorted out, and the car would now go around corners, but there would be no easy fix for the next problem. The car was impossibly slow.
Excellsior had built bodies to the correct dimensions, but they had built them out of sheet metal much thicker than anything Nissan had ever contemplated using, and as a result the cars were dramatically overweight. The 722cc 14 horsepower engine had no chance of propelling the car along at highway speeds, the first Australian Datsuns were destined to be city cars only.
Excelsior and Nissan were aiming to build around 900 cars a year in Australia, but before the first batch of cars were even finished the Australian Government raised the import duty from three percent to twenty percent, thus making the venture no longer economically viable. The 20 cars were eventually finished and sold in Australia in 1936-1937. Even without all these problems the Datsun 13 would have failed on the Australian market. The car was designed to be used on the narrow unsealed streets of Tokyo and Yokahama, and were never intended for long distance, and higher speed travel. Whilst they would have coped with our rough outback roads, which were similar to the poor quality city streets in Japan at the time, they certainly weren't designed to cope with the long distances Australians travelled in extreme conditions. Oh, and as if all these disasters piled up against it weren't enough to kill the project, there was a little thing called the Second World War that would have killed the whole thing anyway.
Only one Australian built Datsun 13 still survives in Australia today, and it's story is pretty interesting too. The car pictured here was owned by Lance Dixon, who is a Melbourne luxury car dealer. He sold Alfas, Bentleys, Hummers and a few others, and he used to own dealerships selling numerous other cars including Ferraris, Maseratis, and Datsuns. In 1972 Lance ran an advertisment in the local newspaper saying he was wanting to buy old Datsuns. One person who replied to his ad did indeed have an "old Datsun", and when he went around to have a look he found an overgrown, badly rusted, but still restorable Datsun 13. Lance spent the next year restoring the 13 to original condition, it's condition so good that it won first prize in the pre-1957 class in Concours d'Elegance in Melbourne the next year. A fitting tribute to an extraordinary, and largely forgotten, chapter in Australian and Japanese motoring history.
