Tag: nissan pikes (Page 1 of 2)

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

Nissan S-Cargo statistics – How many are left?

March 19, 2024 / banpei / 0 Comments

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

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:

Can you guess how many Nissan Be-1s have been imported?

Nissan Be-1 car statistics – How many are left?

January 20, 2024 / banpei / 0 Comments

I think it’s very interesting to find out how many are left of a certain car and the Nissan Pikes cars always had my attention. I recently found a website that scaped the Dutch license plate registry and aggregate cars. This, in turn, allows me to scrape their site and pull my own statistics out of it. That’s how I recently found out there are 269 Nissan Figaros registered in the Netherlands.

Nissan Figaro I encountered in Kensington, London

So I thought, why not create a How many are left series where I highlight a certain car or set of cars and try to figure out how many are left? Today I’ll kick off with the Nissan Be-1, which was the first of the Nissan Pikes cars.

Nissan Pikes “Factory”

Down on the Street: Terracotta 1990 Nissan Pao

October 12, 2023 / banpei / 0 Comments

The Nissan Pao was, just like last weeks Nissan S-Cargo, one of the Pikes cars. Each and every Pikes car had its own distinctive retro styling: the Nissan Be-1 was styled after the Austin Mini, the Nissan Figaro after the Autobianchi Bianchina Trasformabile, the Nissan Rasheen after the Wartbug 353, Nissan S-Cargo after the Citroën 2CV Camionette and the Nissan Pao after the original Renault R4. Well actually the Pao more a mashup of the Renault R4 (overall shape), Citroën 2CV (flap up windows), Kübelwagen (ribs), Aston Martin DB4 (grill and logo), Austin Mini (outside hinges and the front overfenders) and the Austin A40 “Farina” Countryman (split rear tailgate).

Nissan S-Cargo versus Citroën 2CV Camionette versus Garden Snail

Down on the Street: extravagant 1989 Nissan S-Cargo

October 5, 2023 / banpei / 1 Comment

Of all the Pikes cars, the Nissan S-Cargo is definitely the most extravagant. Almost all Pikes cars were retro styled after a specific European car: the Nissan Figaro was styled after the Autobianchi Bianchina Trasformabile, the Nissan Pao after the original Renault R4, the Nissan Rasheen after the Wartbug 353, the Be-1 after the Mini and the Nissan S-Cargo after the Citroën 2CV Camionette. (also called the Fourgonette) Shortly after the Citroën 2CV was released, it received the nickname Ugly Duckling thanks to the Dutch and nowadays this is considered the defacto nickname for it. However, in the UK it has the nickname The Tin Snail and escargot means snail in French, so the name S-Cargo is a double pun here! If you squint your eyes, you can see what the design of the S-Cargo is based upon below:

Commercial Time: Nissan Pao, produced by Pike factory

December 18, 2013 / banpei / 0 Comments

I think we all learned a lot about advertising basics from the Mad Men series, but sometimes advertising can be as simple as this Nissan Pao ad from 1989:

Nissan Pao, produced by Pike factory.
Brilliant!

You can watch the video of the ad below: Continue reading

Japanese Rustoseums: Nissan Rasheen junkyard car

November 27, 2013 / banpei / 1 Comment

After Nissan’s success with the BE-1, the Pao and the Figaro Nissan must have smelled money. So next up for them was retro styling a SUV on top of the Sunny B14 platform and they called it the Nissan Rasheen and sold the car from 1994 to 2000.

For some reason it looks very similar to the Wartburg 353 built in East Germany (DDR) but I don’t think they did that on purpose. I can’t imagine they would do that only that short after the Fall.

Anyway, BANKAKUEMIKO uploaded a video of this marvel at his local junkyard in Japan: Continue reading