Yoshihiko Matsuo, the creator of the Nissan / Datsun Z car, died on July 11 at the age of 86, he reports. Road track. Matsuo was known for his direct and senseless ways that often pitted him against the direction of his corporate bosses and ultimately led to the design of the Datsun 240Z.
Matsuo was born in the city of Himeji, in southern Japan, on July 10, 1934. While attending the Faculty of Art at Nihon University, he helped design the popular three-wheeled Daihatsu Midget work vehicle, Japanese nostalgic car However, it is his career at Nissan where Matsuo earned his place in automotive history.
The Z car’s story began with the Matsuo redesign of the Datsun 411 Bluebird, a pininfarin car whose angled trunk Matsuo compares to “someone squatting in the toilet,” as he explained through an interpreter in a 2017 interview for Jalopnik. Matsuo went above and beyond his assigned role as designer to give the new Bluebird SSS (for Super Sports Sedan) an angled trunk with more room, as well as a sportier kit like a floor-mounted gear lever and twin carburettors.
While these changes were accepted by the Nissan engineering team and boosted Bluebird sales, Matsuo’s top management did not like this mobster going off the line to suggest them. Therefore, he was exiled to the Nissan Shatai subsidiary that built the Datsun Roadster at the time, where there was no major project for Matsuo to work on.
It was in all of Matsuo’s spare time at Nissan Shatai that he gave him the time and space to think about a new sports car. Rather than making another convertible in a crowded field of MGB Roadsters and Fiat 124 Spiders, Matsuo focused on a low-cost, fixed-roof GT car. No one above Matsuo requested this design and, once again, he was challenging Datsun’s hierarchical management structure by starting it, but he pushed the 240Z anyway, positioning it as a Roadster successor in writing a convertible variant.
Another exiled company, Yutaka Katayama, convinced Nissan to focus on the 240Z hardtop that Matsuo really wanted. Katayama became Nissan’s regional president over the United States after altering too many functions in the Japanese office, and, more importantly, he understood that Americans would be more interested in Matsuo’s preferred design for the Z car. .
The Z car forever changed Americans’ perception of Nissan and, by extension, Japanese cars. This was something Matsuo had always dreamed of ever since he started using an American-made Parker 51 pen in high school. He saw the effort Americans put into a simple ballpoint pen design and believed that Japan could rebuild itself into a great world power if the Japanese prided themselves on designing their own everyday objects, such as ballpoint pens and, of course, automobiles.
Matsuo stuck to the principles he used to guide the design of the 240Z throughout his life, telling me in 2017 that his ideal sports car would still be light, small, and affordable, and perhaps still pack an easily turbocharged in-line six. Nor did he refrain from criticizing the direction of the current Nissan 370Z for going against those principles. Even after retiring, he never stopped questioning how things were in the auto industry.
In a business where very few people are willing to delay the status quo, a voice like Matsuo’s will be greatly missed.
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