To many car enthusiasts, the Datsun 510 is the quintessence of old-school cool. Produced between 1967 and 1973, the box-tastic 510 is a fantastic platform for creating any number of customized dream cars, from polished, chrome-trimmed cruisers, to stripped-down, lightweight speed machines. The owner of this particular ’72 wagon would agree. His focus was on performance, adding a roll bar and some serious suspension upgrades to help the plucky compact bring the goods at autocross events and track days. Under the hood is a 2.1-liter inline four-cylinder engine making around 130 horsepower and 130 pound-feet of torque, which is actually sufficient for a car that weighs just 2,000 pounds. Best of all, the majority of the work was done at home in the owner’s garage. All that and more is explained in this new One Take video from our friends over at The Smoking Tire.

Watching the video, you get a definite sense that this 510 is a labor of love, a work in progress that’s always improving, always changing, and always presenting new challenges. Matt Farah is a fan, calling it “responsive” and “lively,” especially praising the feel of slotting through the shifter. Overall, he even thinks it beats the venerated BMW E30 3 Series in several respects. The brakes seem a little sketchy though, requiring a “double-pump” action to actually get it to slow down. Then of course there’s the ever-present tear in the headliner seen towards the top of the interior camera angle… but hey, this is a project car. We call those things “character builders.”

Datsun 510 in pictures

References

BMW 3 Series

Read our full review on the BMW M3 E30.

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