Datsun Baby

In 1965 an new amusement park for young children called Kodomonokuni Park opened in Yokahama. Nissan worked with the owners of the park to develop an educational attraction that would give children the opportunity to learn about road safety and to drive a car themselves. The car Nissan provided was the Datsun Baby.

In the preceding years Nissan had taken over a financially struggling Japanese car manufacturer called Aichi Machine Industry Co., which built a range of tiny Kei class cars that were sold under the name Cony.

In 1961 Cony introduced a tiny truck called the Cony Guppy, this was powered by a 199cc one cylinder engine that produced 11hp. This truck was a sales disaster for Cony, selling well below the expected figures. The car was dropped from the range after a year and the company registered a 140 million yen loss for the year as a direct result of the Guppy failure, which in turn led to Nissan saving Aichi by taking a controlling share in the business and installing a Nissan director to run Aichi.

Abandoning the Guppy project left Aichi with a stockpile of unused parts, and when Nissan decided to get involved with the Kodomonokuni Park driver education project in 1963 they used these leftover Guppy parts to build the cars. A production run of 100 cars was to be built at the Aichi plant and Nissan handled the project in the same manner as a regular production model, with a clay model built to aid in the design and a small scale production line built just for this car. The car had it's own unique chassis and had double wishbone independent suspension and a 2 speed auto-clutch gearbox. The Baby used the Guppy 199cc engine and the car was speed limited to 30kph.

The car had it's own unique chassis and had double wishbone independent suspension and a 2 speed auto-clutch gearbox. The Baby used the Guppy 199cc engine and the car was speed limited to 30kph.

The park opened in May 1965 and is still operating today, though the Datsun Baby attraction was removed in 1973 and replaced with Go-Karts. In that time over 300,000 children got to learn about road safety and to drive a car themselves.

1961 Cony Guppy

The Datsun Baby was based on the mechanicals of the Cony Guppy.

Datsun Baby
Specifications

Length - 2960mm
Width - 1245mm
Height - 1420mm
Wheelbase - 1670mm
Weight - 430kg
Top speed - 30kph Limited
Transmission - 2 speed

Engine Specifications

Model - Cony AE82N
199cc - 1 Cylinder
Power - 11hp

Datsun Baby

Meet the most obscure car in Nissan's history.

1961 Cony Guppy

Datsun Baby Specifications

Engine Specifications

Datsun Baby
Specifications