As for driving the 120Y: “Compared with a modern car, you absolutely know you are driving the Datsun and you are in control, as there are no nannying driver-assistance features. There is no power steering, the choke is manual, you have to push the brake pedal hard to get a meaningful effect and it has keep-fit window winders. But I love driving it and really cherish the tactility of every control. The engine purrs like a sewing machine and never fails to start.”
In October 1973, Autocar presciently observed: “The new 120Y Sunny from Datsun is bound to cause the home industry a lot of headaches.” By early 1975, the 120Y had helped Datsun become the country’s fourth best-selling car brand after British Leyland, Ford and Chrysler UK, beating Vauxhall into fifth place. And 51 years later, Smyth’s two-door is a reminder of the model that inspired so many Britons to buy Japanese.
And in his words: “It is wonderful to drive a car from the 1970s that’s almost like it was brand new.”
We use the fascinating howmanyleft.co.uk for figures of surviving examples, but some cars present more of a challenge than others, so the figures are rarely authoritative. Some pre-1974 records were lost before the DVLA centralised the process, while some cars have their model type misnamed on the V5 vehicle registration documents. A further issue is the omission of the exact model name or generation, or distinction between saloon and estate bodystyles.
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