Nissan restored a rare Datsun Baby mini car to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Kodomo no Kuni children’s park.
Only 100 of these cars were made, and this car, number 100, was kept and preserved in the park grounds before being restored and displayed at Nissan’s headquarters in Yokohama.
The Datsun Baby was built specifically for the park, and was intended to give children a chance to drive a fully functioning car. A photograph from back when the cars were in service shows that they had full-body bumpers installed, but the restored car has them removed. Nissan donated the cars in 1964 and 1965 with the intent to educate children about safe driving.
The car was based off of the Cony Guppy, a small, two-seat pickup built by Aichi Machine Industry. Nissan redesigned the pickup with a two-seat coupe body, but kept the 200-cc single-cylinder engine and the automatic transmission.
The Datsun Baby has a fully independent suspension with double wishbones at the front and street-legal headlamps. For their use at the children’s park, they also had a speed limiter that cut power at 30 km/h and a self-turning mechanism on the steering wheel.
The car was restored by the all-volunteer Nissan Great Car Restoration Club. The club is made up of current Nissan employees. The Datsun Baby is their 10th completed project.
Here is a TFLcar review of another small Nissan car – the 2015 Nissan Juke.