The 411 on the 510 - Autoweek
Not just any 510 but what might be the last one extant that hadn’t been lowered, chopped and engine-swapped. Almost every remaining 510 on the planet has been aftermarketed to death, with the best and worst ideas of every owner it’s ever had. Two years ago Nissan was approached by the son of the original owner of a 1972 510 four-door sedan that had lived its entire life and driven all of its 55,000 original miles in Pennsylvania. “It was really difficult for us to find one that hadn’t been slammed and modded-out,” said Nissan product planner Jonathan Buhler, a lifelong Datsun fan who owns 240Zs and is currently living his dream job. All they had to do was repaint it in the original Bamboo Tan, put in new struts, rebuild the carb, fix a couple of tears in the seats, “…and that was it,” said Buhler. The throws in the transmission were by my estimate about 400 to 500 feet long, with first-to-second taking about a mile. You would use the word, “eventually” in any description of 0-60, which was listed on a spec sheet we were given as 14. 5 seconds. But now it was mine, for a couple hundred miles, anyway. I jumped in the 510 first because you never know how long these cars will last on these trips and I didn’t want to miss out on the opportunity should the unthinkable happen and the car putz-out with some unfixable catastrophe. The spec sheet listed. Source: autoweek.com
