Recently, I was lucky enough to run into these excellent quality images Nissan has made available of their classic products. The Nissan Newsroom contains hundreds and hundreds of brochure photos of just plain wonderful Japanese domestic market metal, and they display the plain along the plain weird.
For Weekend Edition purposes, I decided to dedicate the weekend for the ones I thought really stood out from the masses of images. The first to go is this 1985 Nissan Safari Granroad High Roof Turbo.
Sidestepping the obvious high point that the truck is brown, the Safari, or Patrol as it was known elsewhere, looks excellent with those extremely period-correct graphics. The vehicle here is fully loaded, and the engine is a 3.3-litre turbodiesel six with 110 horsepower.
The interior shots with their warm tones are inexplicably welcoming, and especially in full-res you sort of want to run your hands all over the flawless, never-worn surfaces. Or I do, at least.
You can’t really help, but wonder if the photo session cars ever made it to rough use and hard daily life. There’s something uncomfortable about the thought that this very example would be found rotting in a remote corner of the Japanese islands, with the cloth seats worn through – even if it’s a tool, and proper, hard use was what it was built for.
Datsun-Nissan Weekend Edition: 1985 Nissan Safari Granroad
By Antti Kautonen
Apr 11, 2015
By Antti Kautonen
The resident Finn of Hooniverse. Owns old Peugeots and whatnot, writes long thinkpieces on unloved cars. These two facts might be related.
Bradley Brownell
That’s a real safari machine!
Drove it many times in Kenya!
Something tells me I’m going to enjoy this series a whole lot.
Fantastic! Where did you find this one? I’ve been rooting around http://www.nissan-global.com/EN/HERITAGE/GALLERY/ & http://www.nissan-global.com/EN/HERITAGE/index2.html & http://nissannews.com/en-US/nissan/usa/channels/us-united-states-nissan-heritage-nissan-heritage/photos but haven’t found any Safaris/Patrols.
Plenty of other cool things, though:
I owned two of the mid 80’s Patrols, both swb and the early 24 volt versions. Great cars, extreme strong, good for pulling horse trailers, but we also used them to go on holiday to Spain and Italy, a 3500 mile trip…..yes, those seats are comfy, I know for sure. Picture is the last one I owned, had a mild lift and bigger tires.
Wow. A third generation Patrol, I think. I saw a fifth generation in Crystal Palace, London back in February. I had to turn around and take this shot.
Patrols are high on my list to replace the delica when the time comes, though the later model with the 4.2 turbo diesel. I can’t make it out from the picture, what is the 3rd lever on the trans tunnel? I see a gear shift, a transfer case shifter, and one on the left that I can’t identify.
Diff lock, maybe?
The left one is winch control lever
It might be PTO for winch
So you should be able to import to USA without the man confiscating? Looks like a cool rig. The follow up to 60 Patrol.
Seen a JDM one driving around fairly often. It’s got a high roof like this and painted flat black. looks boss