Another post in the How many are left series and today I’ll dive into how many Nissan S-Cargos have been registered in the Netherlands.

1989 Nissan S-Cargo parked at my local multistory parking garage
1989 Nissan S-Cargo parked at my local multistory parking garage

I’m not going to explain in great detail what the Nissan S-Cargo is. The S-Cargo was the third Pikes car, preceded by the Be-1, Pao and succeeded by the Figaro and the Rasheen. The S-Cargo was introduced at the Tokyo Motor Show in 1989 and manufactured between 1989 and 1991. If you wish to learn more about the S-Cargo, I covered it in great detail in my S-Cargo Down on the Street post.

Finding the S-Cargo

To find all Nissans registered as S-Cargo was quite an extensive search: I found the S-Cargo to be registered under the following names:

Percentage of commercially and privately registered Nissan S-Cargo
Percentage of commercially and privately registered Nissan S-Cargo

To make things even more confusing, there is a separate register for commercial vehicles than for personal vehicles. As the S-Cargo is a delivery van, most of them have been registered as a company-owned vehicle. In theory, you could own a commercially registered car as a person. What matters is that the first registration has to be done by a company and the car has to adhere to certain rules. I’ll not get too far into details here as I’ve already covered that in the Nissan GTi-R how-may-are-left post a few weeks ago.

Number of S-Cargo registered in The Netherlands per year of manufacture
Number of S-Cargo registered in The Netherlands per year of manufacture

I was able to press on and succeeded in extracting a total of 13 S-Cargos to be registered in the Netherlands! The earliest example already made it to the Netherlands in 1997 and the last one in 2017.

The downside of commercially registered cars is that this register lacks information of the colour of the car. This means I can’t run any statistics on the colours of these happy S-Cargos.

Batches of cars

Batches of S-Cargo registrations in the Netherlands
Batches of S-Cargo registrations in the Netherlands

The most interesting fact is are three batches of cars that made it to the Netherlands: I found three registered in less than a month consecutively from each other in May/June/July 1999. A second set was registered in early 2000. A third batch of four cars were registered within months of each other in 2012. This all could be a coincidence, but I suspect these cars were imported together and then registered whenever a buyer turned up.

Batches of S-Cargo registrations in Japan
Batches of S-Cargo registrations in Japan

Another set of batches appeared when I sorted the data by the first registration date. This is the registration date the vehicle got in Japan. As you can see, there’s a batch around 30th of June 1989. This is presumably the launch date of the S-Cargo. The second batch mid-September 1989 with four cars and the third batch was in October 1990. These were probably also bulk deliveries of the S-Cargo. Who said data isn’t fun?

Oddballs

Nissan S-Cargo with a wrongly printed license plate
Nissan S-Cargo with a wrongly printed license plate

I found this picture of a Nissan S-Cargo in the Netherlands that’s not part of the ones I found on the license plate registry. When I ran its license plate through the official register, I found that it was actually a Hyundai Tuscon. I double-checked again with the list and lo and behold: two numerals had been switched around. This means someone made a mistake when creating the plates. I’m not stating they are violating any laws here as it could be a clerical error.

The good thing about having the list of license plates is that you can run it through Google. I was able to find a photo of most of them. Here are the best ones I could find:

Nissan S-Cargo by Niels de Wit
Nissan S-Cargo by Niels de Wit

The above one is by Niels de Wit

Black Nissan S-Cargo for sale on Marktplaats
Black Nissan S-Cargo for sale on Marktplaats

You can find the above S-Cargo for sale here on Marktplaats for less than 5000 euros.

Black Nissan S-Cargo owned by a painter
Black Nissan S-Cargo owned by a painter

This S-Cargo is owned by a painter.

Same Nissan S-Cargo as I spotted earlier
Same Nissan S-Cargo I spotted earlier

This is the exact same S-Cargo I spotted in a previous post.

S-Cargo used as a service vehicle for a garage
S-Cargo used as a service vehicle for a garage

Another S-Cargo is for sale here, but this one sets you back a little over 8000 euros.

The Lane Motor Museum

As a bonus, the Lane Motor Museum in Nashville also owns a Nissan S-Cargo that used to drive around in the Netherlands. It still features its original Dutch license plate:

Dutch registred S-Cargo in the Lane Motor Museum
Dutch registred S-Cargo in the Lane Motor Museum

The plates have been deregistered and removed, so I’m not able to find exact information about them. However, by querying its neighbors I was able to find out it had been imported into the Netherlands in January 2003. Through the Internet Archive, I was able to find the first mention of it on the Lane Motor Museum website in January 2015.

Dutch registred Citroën 2CV and S-Cargo in the Lane Motor Museum
Dutch registred Citroën 2CV and S-Cargo in the Lane Motor Museum

But I also found another photo of the very same car in 2009 next to a Citroën 2CV. This photo was also taken in the Lane Motor Museum. So it only briefly drove around in the Netherlands. Or perhaps it was part of a larger Citroën collection? I have sent my questions to the Lane Motor Museum and I was promised an answer twice. Yet so far I have never received an answer.

Conclusion

Again, this was a fun and satisfying exercise! I found 13 S-Cargo vans registered in the Netherlands, of which I have spotted 7.6% down on the street! In addition to that, I have found photos of 7 online (over 50%!) and 2 for sale.

Photo credits: wrongly printed license plate S-Cargo by CitroënAZU, blue/white S-Cargo by Niels de Wit and the two Lane Motor Museum photos via Wikipedia here and here.