Datsun (ダットサン) is a former marque used by what is now Nissan Motor Co, in order to sell its automobiles in North America, Europe, Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.
The company was originally founded in 1911 by Sotaro Hashimoto and named DAT. It was the first Japanese automobile manufacturer. It was later renamed Nissan.
The financiers who provided the money for the original DAT Automobile Company from which the name is based were investors Kenjiro Den, Rokuro Aoyama and Meitaro Takeuchi. The name was for a very short time DATSON in the 1920s, but later changed to DATSUN when SON was learned to mean "failure" in Japanese.
The brand Datsun is no longer used, though still memorable in Japan and used on Nissan's line of pickups there. Datsun is most famous for their line sports coupes referred to as the Nissan Z-cars and also the Fairlady line of roadsters.
While extremely popular with Nissan enthusiasts, Datsun ran into financial problems, thus the division of Nissan was dropped in Japan. Most people thought this a smart move, considering some Datsun technology was adapted into Nissan's other models.
Some of the newer models were badged with "Nissan Datsun" to prevent confusion
The marque was discontinued after 1983.