The Silvia was a luxury coupe based in the chassis and mechanicals of the Datsun Fairlady sports car. The CSP311 has the same engine as the Fairlady 1600, a 1595cc 96hp 4cyl. R series engine with twin SU carbs. The early engines have 3 bearing crankshafts and a cast iron cylinder head. From engine # R-40001 onwards they had a 5 bearing crank and an alloy head. The bodies were completely hand made. The total production run of Silvias between 1964 and 1968 was only 554.

CUTIE FACT - The Silvia was designed by a German For the design of the Silvia, Nissan engaged the services of a German designer by the name of Count Albrect Graf Goertz, who assisted their in-house designer Kazuo Kimura. Goertz was trained in Germany and in the 1950s traveled to the United States where he worked for Studebaker, designing the Studebaker Starliner. He then returned to Germany, where he was employed by BMW. His work at BMW included the gorgeous 507 convertible. He then moved to Porsche, where he was part of the design team working on the 911.  His first job at Nissan was to take over the Silvia project. According to Goertz, the Japanese designers saw the design process as being an amalgamation of seperate ideas. Goertz designed the car as a single entity that included many of his trademark features seen previously on cars like the BMW 507, such as a long bonnet line that lunges forward of an open grille, large wheels and wheel arches and small, delicate bumper bars. The Silvia was the first Japanese car designed using a full scale clay mock-up.    Goertz later worked on other projects for Nissan including a four seater version of the Silvia that never reached production. He also came up with the concept and initial designs for the Datsun 240Z, unfortunately Nissan chose to heavily redesign the 240Z, eventually settling on a blander design for the production version, rather than the bold design by Goertz.