The car was designed by Yuichi Ohta, who was the son of Hiro Ohta, who founded the Ohta car company in Japan. Yuichi Ohta had previously designed the Datsun DC-3 and the DW-4 Wagonette. Obviously inspired by the Austin Healey, Ohta came up with a design that could best be described as an 'orientalised' Big Healey. The coloured flash along the side of the car and the front section had an obvious Healey 3000 feel, but the rear section looked more like a shorted version of a Kaiser Darrin.
The Datsun S211 has the odd distinction of being the only Nissan product ever to have a fibreglass body. The fibreglass re-inforced plastic resin bodies were made by the Tonouchi Industrial Company in Yokahama, with the materials supplied by the Nitto Chemical Company.
Like the previous Datsun DC-3 sports car, the S211 was based on the mechanicals and chassis of another vehicle, in this case it was the Datsun 211 sedan. The S211 sat on the same chassis as the 211 sedan, and used the same engine, but the S211 had a 4 speed floor change gearbox instead of the 3 speed column change in the sedan. The only other notable mechanical difference was that the sports car sat on 14 inch wheels instead of the sedan's 15 inch wheels.
The dashboard of the S211 is a solid timber panel with the instrument binacle from the 211 sedan mounted in the middle, instead of being directly in front of the driver.
The S211 went on sale in 1959 at a cost of 35000yen, compared to the first Datsun Bluebird which cost 19000yen. With only 20 ever built, and only a few still surviving today, the S211 is the rarest of all Datsuns.
