NISSAN - Silvia (CSP311) 1964

[kombota]

The Nissan Silvia CSP311 made it's public debut at the Tokyo Motor Show in September of 1964. For the design of the Silvia, Nissan engaged the services of a German designer by the name of Count Albrect Graf Goertz.
Goertz was trained in Germany and in the 1950s traveled to the United States where he worked for Studebaker, designing the Studebaker Starliner. He then returned to Germany, where he was employed by BMW. His work at BMW included the gorgeous 507 convertible. He then moved to Porsche, where he was part of the design team working on the 911.
  In the 1960s he was on his way to Nissan. His first job there was to take over the Silvia project. According to Goertz, the Japanese designers saw the design process as being an amalgamation of seperate ideas. Goertz designed the car as a single entity that included many of his trademark features seen previously on cars like the BMW 507, such as a long bonnet line that lunges forward of an open grille, large wheels and wheel arches and small, delicate bumperbars. The Silvia was the first Japanese car designed using a full scale clay mock-up.
  Goertz later worked on other projects for Nissan including a four seater version of the Silvia that never reached production. He also came up with the concept and initial designs for the Datsun 240Z, unfortunately Nissan chose to heavily redesign the 240Z, eventually settling on a blander design for the production version, rather than the bold design by Goertz.


The Silvia's body work was all hand built, with hand beaten panelwork of extraordinary quality, every Silvia I have seen has near perfect panel gaps and flawlessly straight panels. Unfortunately the parts of the car you don't usually see, such as behind the interior upholdstery, behind the dash board and in the wheel arches, are all incredibly rough. They feature vaguely fitting sheetmetal with big daggy lumps of weld hanging off and sharp edges where you can see the tin-snip marks along the edges. (I've recieved many injuries from sharp edges under the Silvia while working on the four Silvias I've restored) As a result of this behind the scenes roughness, the Silvia is the only Early Datsun to encounter rust problems, usually causing some headaches with the sills, the bottom of the doors, the foot wells and the bottom of the wheel arches. Having said that, the Silvia is still better than many cars of the same era and can be easily modified when restoring the car. She is built with quite thick guage sheetmetal which is great for the quality of the car but the extra weight detracts from it's performance.
  The Silvia sits on a modified Fairlady 1500 SP310 chassis, the main differences being the addition of new bumper bar mounts and some changes to the mounting points for the body. The floor pan is mostly derived from the SP310. She sat on 14" wheels that were 4 1/2" wide (the 14" wheels fitted to the later Fairlady 1600 SP311 were only 4" wide). She was the first Japanese production car fitted with disc brakes, using Dunlop Sumitomo twin piston callipers (the same as those used on the E-type Jaguar and the Ferrari 330) operating on 284mm rotors. These were later used on the SP311. At the back were the 228mm drum brakes from the Fairlady 1500. Most of the front end and steering was carried over from the Fairlady 1500, the only major differences being spring rates and different hubs. This meant she had double wishbone independant front suspension and a leaf sprung live rear axle. Steering was via a cam and lever box with a 14.8:1 ratio. Power was delivered via a 4.11:1 ratio hypoid bevel diff. (optional 3.889:1)
  The electrical system was a departure from the norm for Nissan, being the first of their cars to be fitted with a 12 volt negative earth system (all previous Datsuns had 12 volt positive earth). She also used an alternator instead of the usual generater.


The Silvia was the first car fitted with Nissan's new R engine. The R engine was a further development of the 1488cc G engine, which was a massively improved version of the Austin B series engine, which was borrowed from Austin during their post war alliance. The R engine was a 1595cc over head valve engine with a 3 bearing crankshaft. The bore size was 87.2mm and the stroke 66.8mm. It was fitted with two 38mm Hitachi SU carbs and a light weight pressed steel exhaust manifold. It produced 96hp at 6000rpm and 103ft-lb of torque at 4000rpm. Later cars had an R engine with an alloy head and a 5 bearing crankshaft. The Silvia's engine was later used in the Fairlady 1600 and the Bluebird SSS RL411. A single carb version was later used in the Datsun Homer truck, the Datsun forklift and numerous other vehicles. It was later bored out to 2 litres and called the H20, this was used in commercials until the 1980s.
  The Silvia was the first Datsun to have synchromesh on all forward gears. She had a 4 speed close ratio gearbox with Porsche type servo-synchros and a floor change selector. Ratios were:- 1st 3.382, 2nd 2.013, 3rd 1.312, 4th 1.000 and reverse 3.365. It was also the first Datsun to have a single plate clutch with diaphragm springs, previous ones had single plates with coil cushioning springs. Clutch diameter was 200mm.


Many books have refered to the Silvia's sales figures as being disappointing or as one book said "a failure", due to the fact that they only sold 554 of them. I doubt Nissan intended to build many more than that, if they did they would have geared it up for a full production run rather than hand assembling each car, which is a slow and expensive way to build a car, especially if you want to make a lot of them. The other reason they weren't likely to sell a lot of them was the price. The list price in Australia in 1966 was $4390, which mean't it was far brom being a cheap car. To give you an idea of how expensive it was, here's a list of prices of other cars in 1966.

Nissan Silvia  $4390                        
Datsun Bluebird  $1798
Datsun Fairlady  $2690                    
Nissan Cedric Custom 6 $2950
Alfa Romeo Giulia  $3730
Citroen ID19 Parisienne  $3476
Holden Premier  $2660                    
Honda S600 convertible  $1990
Prince Skyline GT  $2850                
Jaguar Mark 2 $5086
MGB  $2840                                    
Lotus Super 7  $2900
Lotus Elan  $4300                          
Mercedes-Benz 200 sedan  $5088
Morgan Plus 4  $2880                      
Triumph TR4 IRS  $3580

Nissan and Datsun were also virtually unknown brand names in most countries in the 1960s, the fact that they sold as many Silvias as they did at that price against cars such as the Lotus Elan is a testament to the exceptional quality of the car.
  Nissan gives the following production and sales figures for the Silvia. These figures represent both right hand drive and left hand drive models. They were all right hand drive, with the exception of one left hand drive prototype.


Driving the Silvia. The Silvia and the Fairlady 1600 share nearly all their mechanical components and basically the same chassis, so you'd expect them to feel pretty well the same, but they don't. The Silvia is silghtly faster, even though it's 58kg heavier then the Fairlady, thanks to it's rather low ratio diff. (it could be ordered with the optional 3.889:1 diff)  The down side of this is a lower top speed of 165kph compared to the Fairlady's 170kph.
  The Silvia doesn't handle quite as good, due to the slightly softer springs and the extra 58 kilos it carries. Most of that extra weight is carried high in the car (it has a roof and extra glass) which raises it's centre of gravity. It still handles better than most cars. Where the Silvia is noticeably better is it's ride quality. It doesn't have the Fairlady's harshness and it offers a very comfortable ride. It handles dirt roads much better and is enormous fun when driven hard on dirt roads.
  She cruises comfortably at speeds up to 140kph, above that the engine noise becomes a little intrusive, and it starts to drum a bit in the cabin. It's quite aerodynamic for a 30+ year old car, and you don't get the wind noise you often get with older pre-wind tunnel cars. The brakes are quite good too. I've had a few emergency stops from high speeds and each time she's stopped
dead straight and very quick. Repeated stops will show up a little fade but nothing too serious. If the brakes don't feel too good the problem is more than likely the disc rotors. For some reason these will warp slightly,especially if the car hasn't been used for a few years. Get them machined before you go rebuilding the (really expensive to rebuild) callipers.
  But most importantly, the main reason you buy a car like this is because of it's looks, and the Silvia looks just spectacular. Beautiful from every angle, especially in the front 3/4 view, she was perfectly balanced with her long angular bonnet and short tail. the overall subtlety of it's look hid the amazingly complex folds in it's panel work. Sports Car World magazine described her as "bold, distinctive and incredibly attractive" and "The pretiest Oriantal so far" and "an indication of Japan's sports car building potential" and "Pretty, pert and petite. Yes, the Japanese CAN match the Continent's best-- AND look original". When compared to other cars from 1964 it was an incredibly advanced design.


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Edited by: http://p086.ezboard.com/bamigosdosjaponesesantigos.showUserPublicProfile?gid=umtali>Umtali at: 28/10/07 0:14

[Cortina Team]

Mais um pouco de história http://www.deephousepage.com/smilies/gap.gif ALT=":[upss]">

http://www2.uol.com.br/bestcars/ph2/160b.htm" target="top">www2.uol.com.br/bestcars/ph2/160b.htm
 

[MRS]

Parabéns ao iniciador desta página.O Silvia foi uma lufada de ar fresco na produção da Datsun e embora quase não tenha tido expressão em números marcou uma viragem na marca,tanto mais que não saiu de Murayama Plant onde estavam os melhores Engenheiros,os da Prince Motor Company,"pais" do Skyline e dos melhores carros japoneses da época.
E não devem fazer ideia do que era este carro na altura, pois conhecendo bem a mecanica R e sabendo que este tinha suspensão traseira, ao contrário do Fairlady (nessa altura os japoneses ainda não dominavam as molas semi-elipticas) posso bem adivinhar quão excelente seria este carro.
O ano passado apareceu um à venda no Ebay ,mas estava um pouco adulterado e não fui atrás.Hoje valem uma fortuna pois foram produzidos muito poucos.Os que restam estão essencialmente no Japão e na Austrália.
Parabéns de novo ao iniciador do Tópico.
MRS

[MRS]

Só mais um ponto.Não confundir CSP311-Silvia com SPL311-Fairlady da Ultima geração.Quando tinha o volante à direita era só SP311.O Silvia era de facto o Coupé do Fairlady Roadster.
MRS

[kombota]

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http://www.datsun.org/fairlady/SilviaBrochure.htm" target="top">Silvia Brochure

A não perder a informação disponibilizada por este site em relação a este modelo e outros.

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