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earlydatsun.com
The Complete Guide to Classic Datsun Cars and Trucks |
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earlydatsun.com
The Complete Guide to Classic Datsun Cars and Trucks |
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| Nissan Skyline C10
The four door four cylinder version of the series. Different trim levels of thes car included the Family deLuxe, the Touring deLuxe and the Sporty deLuxe. |
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| Nissan Skyline 2000GT GC10
The four door six cylinder version of the C10 series. |
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| Nissan Skyline Wagon WC10
The wagon version of the C10 series. This car is a four cylinder, no six cylinder wagon was built. The shadowing in this photo best shows off the 'coat hanger and canvas' crease feature. |
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| Nissan Skyline 2000GT Coupe KGC10
The coupe version of the GC10 Skyline 2000GT sedan. |
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| Nissan Skyline GT-R PGC10
The first model Skyline GT-R. |
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| Nissan Skyline GT-R Coupe KPGC10
The coupe version of the Skyline GT-R sedan. |
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| Nissan Skyline C110
The C10 series was repleced in 1972 by the Skyline C110 series. |
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The Skyline name dates back to 1957 when the first Skyline, the ALSI model
came out. In 1963 an all new Skyline called the S50 went on sale, and it
was sold as a direct competitor to the Datsun Bluebird. In reality the
S50 Skyline wasn't really in the same class as the Bluebird, it's finish
and appointments were always slightly better, which really put it in a
class slightly above that of the Bluebird. Plus it had the larger 1484cc
73hp G-1 engine, which certainly put it in a higher performance class.
This was reflected in it's selling price, which was above that of the Bluebird.
As well as designing the new Skyline the engineers had been working on
a new engine, which was a radical departure from the old pushrod G-1 engine.
In 1962 Prince had become the first Japanese car manufacturer to put an
overhead cam engine into a production car, with the large Prince Gloria
sedan being fitted with a Prince designed OHC 2 litre 6 cylinder engine.
They had also developed a double overhead cam version of this engine which
had powered the Prince R-380 race car which had gone on to break several
endurance records. All this experience would be put to use on the new passenger
car engine for the C10. There would be two versions of this new engine,
the larger 1800 version would be used in the Prince designed Nissan Laurel
C30, while a smaller 1500 version would power the Skyline C10. The engine
was called the G-15, and it was a 1483cc 94hp 4 cylinder engine. The cylinder
head was alloy and was an overhead cam design, but rather than having the
intake and exhaust ports on the same side, this engine was a cross flow,
with the intake and exhaust ports on oposite sides. This engine flowed
beautifully and the 94hp it produced from 1483cc was quite impressive.
The car itself was quite a different beast. The previous S50 was a very
pretty and rather effeminate looking design, with soft flowing line and
delicate looking trim pieces. The C10 was the opposite. Even it it's base
model mode it had an agressive look to it, with lots of sharp edges and
creases. Pretty it wasn't, but masculine and purposeful it was. The design
team was headed up by a Prince designer called Shinichiro Sakurai. Sakurai
had an image in his head about how he wanted the creases on the side of
the car to look. He wanted to give the car the impression that something
with a sharp edge was pushing outwards from within the car. He was having
trouble explaining this to the designers, so the next day he came to work
with a blank painter's canvas in a frame, and a wire coat hanger. He bent
the wire coat hanger into the shape he required and pressed on the back
of the canvas to demonstrate the look he was after. If you look at the
side of the car, particularly on the rear guards just above the wheel opening,
you can see the look of the wire pressed on the canvas.
The Nissan Skyline C10 went into production in August 1967. Initially there
was only the 1500 sedan and a 1500 wagon. With the previous S50 Prince
decided they wanted to go racing with the Skyline, and Sakurai hit on the
idea of fitting the OHC 6 cylinder engine from the Prince Gloria into the
little 1500 Skyline. To do this they had to lengthen the car, and they
basically cut the front of the car off at the firewall and added 200mm
of extra panelwork to the front to enlarge the engine bay to fit the huge
6 cylinder engine. To qualify for racing the car had to be homologated,
and a certain number of these long wheel base Skylines needed to be built
and offered for sale. The resulting car was called the S54 Prince Skyline
GT. The GT ended up being hugely popular and ended up going into full production.
From the begining of the C10 design project it was conceived with a six
cylinder in mind, and in October 1968 the six cylinder GC10 Nissan Skyline
2000GT went into production. This car was initially fitted with the old
1988cc 106hp OHC six cylinder G-7 engine from the previous Skyline GT-A,
but later in the production run Nissan began to rationalise the model ranges
and eliminate some of the duplication that existed within the merged companies.
As a result the G-7 was dropped from the GC10 an the Nissan designed L20
six cylinder engine was fitted instead.
The engineers from Prince were always a bit mad, one only has to look at
what they did fitting the six cylinder Gloria engine, and triple Weber
carburettors, into the little Skyline 1500 to understand this. This slightly
mad streak hit them again when it came time to bring out the ultimate specification
of the C10 series. The Prince engineers decided that what the performance
model needed was a modified version of the GR8 engine that was fitted to
the record breaking Prince R-380 race car. The engine would be designated
the S20, and it was a four valve per cylinder, double overhead cam 1988cc
six cylinder engine fitted with triple Weber DCOE carburettors. This engine
produced 160hp, which may not sound that impressive today, but that figure
matched the Porsche 911 in it's day. This car was designated the PGC10,
and it become the first Skyline GT-R.
In June 1970 a coupe version of the GC10 was introduced to complete the
model line, this model was called the KGC10. At the same time a GT-R version
of the coupe was introduced called the KPGC10, which would become the ultimate
performance model of the range. A four cylinder 1800 coupe was offered
at the same time.
