Looking on the bright side with new Sunny

Press, 28 October 1982, Page 22

Looking on the bright side with new Sunny

BEHIND the WHEEL

with

Peter Greenslade

New Zealand’s car assemblers are now encountering the same sort of problems that confront the New Zealand Meat Producers' Board and the freezing companies. In each case there seems to be a marked reluctance on the part of the consumer to buy the product. Car parks at the motor assembly plants are becoming cluttered, just as freezing company cool stores are literally bulging with meat.

To say the best, the outlook for the car men and the cockies looks more than a little grim. But, take heart, at least the top brass at Auckland-based Nissan Motor Distributors (N.Z.) 1975, Ltd, is not moaning and at Rotorua last week, where motoring correspondents met the new Nissan Sunny saloon for the first time, the people who presided over the launching were at least able to engender the feeling that they were looking to the future with some confidence. the last three months have been difficult for the car industry. The total market has slumped by 25 per cent.

Nissan’s managing director, Dick Wilks, told us that four major factors had caused the downturn—the price freeze on June 21, the August 5 Budget with a further restriction on vehicle leasing, the September 10 Industries Development Commission draft report on

the motor industry development plan and the over-all tightening of liquidity. Mr Wilks, who in more unguarded moments reveals that his affable expression and rather calm approach to his and New Zealand’s problems camouflage an extremely active and perceptive mind, rather predictably took a very moderate view of. the rather unhealthy situation the four factors had generated and did not attempt to lay the blame anywhere.

With some justification, he did offer the opinion that he, among others, was surprised by the mistaken public belief that new cars will get cheaper, or, in fact, that new car prices will not rise during the price freeze. It was the general manager, marketing, Peter Farmer, one of the brighter young men at Todd Motors in years gone by, who really got down to the nitty gritty when he pointed out that the now-defunct Datsun Sunny, introduced to New Zealand in 1978, had attracted 11,782 buyers in the intervening period and that was an average of 240 new Sunny sales a month. “In its first three months, total sales of the new Nissan Sunny are expected to reach 350 a month,” he said. “We will achieve this sales rate primarily because the vehicle is more clearly superior to any other vehicle in its segment and in many

respects is superior to, and certainly equal to, the new 1.6 front-wheel-drive vehicles such as Camira, Accord and Tredia/Cordia.” It should be explained that the Tredia is a new car from Mitsubishi that Todd Motors showed to motoring writers this week. It is a four-door saloon, while the Cordia is a more sporty two-door version of the same car which is, in effect, a replacement for the Mitsubishi Lancer. Mr Farmer went on: “In the 10 years I have been involved with new model press days, I have never made, comment on a new model car as confident as that.”

In my opinion, Mr Farmer was just a bit over-conident for, from experience, I would say that the Holden Camira and the Honda Accord are cars of a different class and, from the little I know, I believe that the same can be said of the new Mitsubishis.

For all that, the Nissan Sunny is quite an impressive little car. It comes in 1.3 and 1.5-litre versions and by adopting the front-wheel-drive configuration, the Japanese manufacturer who, incidentally, produced more than 2.58 million vehicles in 1981, against Britain’s total of almost 1.77 million, has come up with a four-door saloon that offers more leg and headroom than its larger Datsun Bluebird. Although the luggage boot has an agreeably large floor area, it is rather lacking in depth, which is usually one of the pluses dimensionally in cars with front-wheel drive. The first impression Datsun Sunny owners should gain on inspecting the Nissan Sunny is that the new model is much more of a car. It feels and is more spacious. Like the old Sunny, it also feels quite lightly built, but on the road, bitumen or loose-metalled, it feels ever so much more of a car—taut, responsive and secure. Frankly it’s, hard to visualise a Datsun Sunny owner switching cars and not buying a Nissan Sunny. It’s just so much better in every respect. On the hilly and twisty forest roads around Rotorua, I found the 1.3-litre versions rather a bore. They' left one with the feeling that they would be hard-pressed to pull the skin off a rice pudding. However, in the town itself they were admirable. I’d call the 1.3 version a good car for the quiet commuter or the suburban housewife who spends time dodging round the supermarkets and delivering offspring hither and yon. The 1.5-litre version is much more lively and at the same time surprisingly flexible. It has a five-speed gearbox, whereas the 1.3 has four forward ratios, and despite the fact that its engine has pretty mild manners, it can be driven at almost crawling pace in fifth gear with no

complaints from the transmission. On the other hand, it will almost tear away from traffic lights and hold its own comfortably with most of the traffic one is likely to encounter on a day’s run.

I was most impressed with this car’s stability on loose surfaces and would go so far as to say that its handling qualities, albeit at a little slower speeds, are more akin to those of the Holden Camira than any other massproduced front-drive car I’ve driven. In my book, that’s saying something. While the car displays a slight tendency to understeer, to all intents and purposes, the steering is neutral and, what is more, there is next to nothing in the way of front-drive feedback through the rack and pinion steering. The steering is fairly light, considering it is rack and pinion. Some folk may find it a little disconcerting until they grow accustomed to the car. If they are also accustomed to drive front-wheel-drive cars they will also find the Nissan Sunny’s turning circle of nine metres disconcerting! That is the smallest front-drive turning circle I know of and it would be considered excellent even in a rear drive car. In addition to the 1.5 fivespeed manual car, there is an automatic Sunny. This features what Nissan calls a lock-in torque converter. It is said to overcome the inherent problem of automatic transmission—slip resulting from the fluid coupling. In Nissan’s system, once the car reaches a road speed of about 65km/h a mechanical clutch locks up the con; nection between the engine’ and the driven gears, thereby effectively converting the transmission to manual operation in top gear. This clutch is hydraulically operated and once the road speed drops below the critical level the system becomes fully automatic once more. The direct benefit derived from the system is a fuel saving. Because automatic systems have an inbuilt slip factor, they tend to gobble more fuel than manuals. This system must, therefore, reduce fuel consumption, particularly if the car is driven on the open road at touring speeds over longer distances. Frankly, while acknowledging the merits of the Nissan innovation, I believe it would be of more value if fitted to a 2-litre or larger-’ engined car. In automatic form the Sunny seemed inordinately sluggish to me. Also one must bear in mind that the system does not function until the car reaches 65km/h. That is about 40 m.p.h., a speed rather inappropriate for suburbia shopping at supermarkets and carting children to and from school.

Although these cars have obviously been built to a price, they are quite well appointed. The ones I sampled were upholstered in good quality velour—grey with a darker discreet check—and the carpet seems to be of reasonable quality.

The 1.5-litre versions, come equipped with a tachometer and a digital clock as well as warning light to advise of the fuel level, the state of the doors and rear lamp failures. All models have heated rear windows, cigarette lighters, those in the 1.5 models being illuminated, and remote-con-trol boot-lid openers.

These are good looking cars. Small cars can look deformed, but the Nissan Sunny is well proportioned. Its lines are clean and in profile it looks like one of the better European saloons from its high boot, through its low waistline, with generous expanse of glass, to its

sloping bonnet and flush front end. This is a car that shares its engine with Nissan’s Pulsar that was introduced here about a year ago. It comes in 1270 cu cm and 1488 cu cm sizes: has semi-spherical combustion chambers; a 9 to 1 compression ratio in both cases, and is of the single overhead camshaft type, the camshaft being driven by a toothed belt.

Generally, the engine which has its transmission and differential gear in line, takes up most of the available space and there is very little space between it and the front of the car. All the same most components, with the possible exception of the oil filter, should be reasonably accessible for do-it-yourselfers.

If anyone can believe new cars are reasonable these days, the Nissan Sunny range must be considered as such.

The basic 1.3 Sunny SG costs $11,396, the SGX fivespeed $13,484 and the SGX automatic $14,184.

Finally, just in case anyone was wondering, the Datsun Sunny becomes the Nissan Sunny henceforth. All the cars you knew as Datsuns will be Nissans in future. The position is confusing for the Japanese company and for the consumer, and so all products from Nissan—and they include space hardware among other products—are going to be identified unmistakeably as Nissan products. This, of course, cannot be accomplished overnight and it won’t be until later next year that New Zealand’s Datsun dealers become labelled as Nissan dealers. Now there’s a job for a smart signwriter.