Ah, the C-pillar; of all the pillars we name with letters in the automotive world, the C-pillar is by far the thirdest. C-pillars, perhaps as a result of their location towards the rear of the car and the seeming freedom that offers, can find themselves growing to extraordinary sizes and taking on some strange shapes. Which is pretty much what occurred on the first-generation Datsun (or Nissan) Cherry 100A or late 120A. I mean, just look at that damn thing! It’s huge and majestic and unashamed and unbound!
This particular C-pillar only appeared on the coupé version of the Cherry, which was quite a striking design, largely because of this C-pillar, which, just in case you didn’t notice, was absolutely massive.
I mean, is it even still a “pillar” at this point? It’s a whole wall.
It almost feels like Dick Teague’s famous sketch for the AMC Gremlin, drawn on an airline barf bag:
But then when I look at the Cherry, I realize Datsun’s designers took things way further than Dick Teague ever dreamed. Look at the proportions of it! It takes up at least a third of the car, with its vast, unbroken, painted surface.
I bet visibility was pretty miserable.
Cargo area seems to be pretty cavernous, and that rear window is just about horizontal, and is almost a glass roof more than a rear window.
There was an X-1 variant as well that had a 1.2-liter engine and twin carbs that look like Hitatchi SU-style carbs, because they have those bottle-like dashpot things.
The Cherry coupé has a somewhat van-like quality to it, because of that vast, windowless side panel, and, really, it almost is a van. That’s a good-sized and relatively private cargo area back there, flanked by those twin pillars of C.
Those are good taillights, too. That odd little air-exhaust-vent molding or maybe a scoop I’m not so sold on, though.
Is this sort of strangely prescient of the Cybertruck? I mean, it kind of looks like that, with that bulky, angular ass. You could hide a truck bed in there, if you really wanted to.
Anyway, I really just wanted you to appreciate that huge C-pillar as much as I do, if possible. Because, damn.
I “C” what you mean…now I want a frozen Icee
I see in the x-ray view the rear axle shows separate shock and coil over. I always thought this was a relatively new phenomenon but here it is in the early 1970s.
Also: Cool.
https://www.nissan-global.com/EN/HERITAGE_COLLECTION/cherry_coupe_x1.html
Watermellon Datsun? Watermellon Datsun.
Datsun, or escape pod?
Dwarf breadvan.
As a former owner of, and long-haul commuter in, a B-210 wagon, I salute this forebear.
It reminds me of the B210 a buddy owned in HS. Tough little thing, considering the shenanigans we got up to with 3 or 4 teenage boys in it.
Oh my gawd Becky! Look at those c-pillars! They’re so huge!
I like C-pillars and I cannot lie. You other drivers can’t deny…
They’re just, like, out there.
Looking a little Celestiq-y
Visibility would be absolutely fine if the mirrors were adjusted properly. Plenty of rear window and the door windows go well behind the driver. I’m not even talking about the fender mirrors (never experienced them myself). THAT (how to adjust mirrors properly now that OEMs are using side view mirrors that are not capable of adjustable to angles that permit the task) is something worth writing an article about! Even 99% of the readership is almost certainly unaware of how it’s actually supposed to be done, despite how it even used to be spelled out in owners manuals back in the 50s! These days, drivers ed teaches it wrong (confirmed to me just two days ago by an youth), and I don’t think I’ve seen a car on the road aside from my own where I couldn’t see some dim face in a SIDE view mirror from BEHIND.
(This is a habit I proselytize at every opportunity, and a hill I will die on.)
Back a 1974 F600 chipper truck and chipper up winding driveways for five years in your twenties and then you can rant. Also had that hood fly up on the highway, and safely got it over to the shoulder to close it.
Soooo what is this mythical way of setting the rearview mirrors then?
I use this method, which is quite effective. To set the driver-side mirror, from the driver seat, lean over as far to the left as you can (up against the window, basically) and angle the mirror outward until you can just no longer see the side of your own car. To set the passenger side, lean to the right over the console and do the same.
Use the same process. Works great. Have to reset everytime my wife used the cars as she disagrees.
I thought everybody did this? It seems like the proper and logical way.
Then again, based on the quality of driving I see on the interstate…
There are articles with diagrams and stuff that can explain it better, but basically you angle them very far away from the car, so they properly show your blind spots instead of uselessly duplicating the view from your central windshield mirror.
Man, fender mirrors are the best. Tiny blind spots, don’t even have to turn your head to look, I just love them. If we ever get cameras in place of mirrors, I want my screens to be in the same spot in my field of view.
I have never driven a car with fender mirrors. Kind of curious how they would be.
While setting the mirrors well may be beneficial, not universally understood, and not universally done, having actual visibility is of great benefit. I’ve driven cars with good and poor visibility, vans, box trucks, and a jeep.
Being able to actually turn your head and see something is of great use, including when maneuvering at low speeds and in tight quarters, or where there is a lot of pedestrian activity. Pulling alongside a pillar in a tight underground garage I don’t want to rely only on mirrors. Hell, I’m watching out /for/ the mirror so I don’t damage it (been there once).
There’s a reason why very review of the Mazda 3 praises the car but condemns the rearward visibility. And I don’t think auto journalists don’t universally fail to adjust their mirrors properly.
You do you – But I personally hate not having the side of my car in the mirror for a spatial reference. I find it disorienting and it makes it impossible to know if the mirror has been bumped. If I need to see more in the mirror I can shift my head.
And no image in a mirror is as good as being able to turn look out the window.
And if we’re very quiet, and still, we can witness the miracle of morphology as the reborn coupe emerges from its crystallise.
I mean, that C-pillar is big enough for an opera window!
You know what works really well in the summer in Tokyo? A car with a gigantic horizontal window.
The C pillar keeps prying eyes away from your blow up doll named “Erika”, while the heat keeps her inflated to full firmness.
I prefer the term “vinyl partner”. Much more inclusive.
Is that an Autopian membership level? I’d spring for the “Rich Corinthian Leather partner”
I love it! Reminds me of an Alpine A310, which was almost exactly contemporaneous but looks much more like an 80s car than a 70s car. And the white X-1 pictured with the rectangular “vents” going up to the roof looks like a budget Alfa Romeo Montreal , which came out 3 years earlier. This was definitely the era where Japanese manufacturers were quickly picking up on styling cues from American and European cars and incorporating them, before fully creating their own Japanese identity.
You just know that started life as a B-pillar in the original sketches before Engineering had to stick their stupid noses in and be like “Oh, we can’t make a window that long” and some nonsense about regulations or door length or some other malarkey. The designer grabbed a ruler and scribed the thinnest, straightest line he could right down the side of the car, and the b-wall became the c-wall. That designer went home that night and sobbed into a Lotus Europa S1 brochure.
I can also see the opposite: the design started having a normal window filling most of that space and dividing it into two pillars. Then either someone in management or the crazy guy in design said, “why don’t we replace that last glass with a solid metal panel‽ It’ll look *so cool*!!! *Please* can we make a prototype????”
I’d call that a C-wall, that ain’t a mere pillar!
The taillights are near identical to those of an XT Falcon.
The last time I saw pillars that large was on a hill in Athens!
More C Pillar than a Mazda 3 hatchback
Is that the panel delivery version? (lame joke)
It’s the Nissan Cherry Pie Panel Delivery Coupe DeLuxe.
I’ve always felt–probably not any brilliant insight–that the C-pillar can make or break any design. It’s where the beltline and roofline meet, and the rear wheel arch is just below. It all has to be just right.
This C-pillar is…something else. It creates a kind of junk drawer for fussy details. The prominent badging, the vent thingy, the crease along the bottom, and then the graphics on the X-1, which appear to go through the badging.
I read somewhere that JDM designs, at least historically, tended to focus on details more than the overall shape and proportions. This was because cars in Japan are typically seen in a fragmentary way through dense traffic. Maybe this is an example.
Back in my day we didn’t have no “blind spot monitoring”! If another car was there when you turned in or changed lanes, you got smacked and that was that! We pounded out the dents with our bare hands! Insurance? What’s that? The cash stuffed under our mattresses was our insurance! If we ran out we went broke and ate whatever we could find on the side of the road! That’s the way it was and we liked it!
#grumpyoldman
#davidwontgetthispopculturereferenceeither
And we had onions tied to our belts, because it was the style at the time.
By God we loved it!
I read this in Dana Carvey’s grumpy old man voice.
Fun fact about the taillights: they were a common mod in the kaido racer scene.
You’d think a cherry would never need a C section, but the Datsun Cherry does.
Imagine how many sausages and cases of beer you could fit in that thing…
My Winter Car reference?
No – but Bento Boxes and large bottles of Sapporo?
Hai!
At what point does a fat C-pillar turn a car into a panel van?
Marketing and swinging rear doors.
That C-pillar is almost as huge as an original Lotus Europa B-pillar.
This is the correct first comment.