Wednesday, August 14, 2024

Automotif DXXXIII...


In the late Eighties and early Nineties, Nissan's Pike Factory built a quartet of adorable, whimsical show-cars-for-the-street on the basic mechanicals of its normally staid and sober-sided March/Micra mini car.

The one pictured above is the S-Cargo, a teeny micro van whose name is officially short for "Small Cargo" but is obviously a play on words referring to its snail-like shape and Citroen-esque styling cues.


Under the hood you'll find Nissan's undersquare 74hp single-carb 1.5L OHC four, backed with a three-speed slushbox driving the front wheels. Behind the driver's and passenger's seats is an open cargo area. It's not large in the square footage department, but the yoinks of overhead room means the cubic footage is quite deluxe.

Something like eighty percent of the 10,685 produced from '89 to '91 were in white. They were all right-hand drive and only sold in Japan, through reservations and lotteries. This one was photographed in Indianapolis in September of 2021 using a Nikon 1 V2 and 1 Nikkor 18.5mm f/1.8 lens.