Motoring Misfits: Nissan Cherry Europe

It's odd how cars made in particular countries seem to share certain characteristics. Italian cars for instance are known for sportiness and good handling at the expense of reliability, whereas those from Japan are exactly the opposite, very well built but usually very dull. Combining the best bits from these two nations should therefore have created the perfect blend of Italian flair with Japanese quality, but what resulted was instead the worst of both worlds. The Alfa Romeo Arna is a motoring misfit in its own right, but it has a lesser-known twin that is even more so, a Nissan built by Alfa Romeo and rebadged back into a Nissan. How did such a bizarre state of affairs come into being?

A Nissan that's really an Alfa that's really a Nissan 

Cedric's Scandinavian adventure

Here's a first for this blog, as I've been asked by someone else to write about their experiences with classic cars. This is such an epic adventure that there was no way I could say no when my friend James asked me to feature his Scandinavian road trip bringing home a rare Nissan he had just bought in Finland of all places. He spent a whole week on the road just doing his own thing, clocking up the miles and living his dream, so read on to find out how this adventure of a lifetime came about...

What a thing of beauty! I bet many of you have never seen one of these.

Unsung heroes: Nissan March Super Turbo

For the month of March, what could be more appropriate than a car called March? Everyone must know the Nissan Micra (or March as it's named in Japan) and it's definitely not an obscure car, but I must admit to being totally unaware of this particular version and have my friend Matt to thank for telling me about it. As soon as he mentioned what was under the bonnet, something you really wouldn't expect from such a car, I knew it was worthy of inclusion in the unsung heroes series, so here's the story.

It may look like a barried up Micra but there's something very unusual under the bonnet (image: Nissan)

The Volkswagen Group may be making headlines with their twincharged TSI engine range featuring both a turbocharger and a supercharger and claiming this to be a 21st century innovation, but this technology's first use in a production car was actually three decades ago in a limited-run and largely unknown high-performance version of the Nissan March. Here in the UK the Micra has an unglamorous reputation as the car of choice for pensioners, driving instructors and pizza delivery boys, so the Super Turbo will make you look at it in a more exciting way, but sadly it was sold only on the Japanese domestic market and is virtually unheard of in Europe.

Unsung heroes: Nissan Bluebird

The unsung heroes series today turns its attention to another car from a Japanese manufacturer, although in reality it was actually a product of home-grown British industry. This was the car with which Nissan established themselves as a major player in Europe and that laid the foundations for the Japanese marques' dominance of UK car production. Cars from Japan may have started to gain a substantial foothold in the 1970s, but it was in the eighties with models like the T12/T72 Nissan Bluebird that they really became a mainstream choice. It may have had a Japanese badge but the Bluebird was essentially a British car, more so than many of the contemporary Fords and Vauxhalls that despite being thought of as British were actually built elsewhere in mainland Europe. The earliest Bluebirds are now thirty years old but survival rates are higher than many of their contemporaries, a testament to their durability and the large quantities in which they were sold.

An early Washington-built Bluebird, still giving good service to its ninth owner.