Junkyard Find: 1983 Nissan Sentra Coupe
The first-generation Nissan Sentra first appeared on American roads in 1982, early in the very costly Datsun-to-Nissan rebranding process. The lightweight, fuel-efficient Sentra was a big sales hit, because drivers in the early 1980s (with vivid memories of the gas lines of a few years earlier) were willing to put up with double-digit horsepower and lots of NVH in a car that promised decent reliability and cheap point-A-to-point-B costs. Now, of course, nearly all of the early Sentras are gone, so this well-worn example in a San Francisco Bay Area yard gives us an interesting history lesson.
Speaking of history, I found this 1971 Chevron-issued San Francisco street map in the car, probably moved from whatever car this Sentra’s original purchaser owned prior to this car.
Look, there’s the much-loathed Embarcadero Freeway, which was torn down after suffering serious damage from the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.
I ran the smog-check history for this car, and it last had a California emissions test in 1997. The most likely scenario is that it racked up this impressive mileage total between 1983 and the late 1990s (California requires emissions tests every two years), then sat outdoors for nearly two decades before getting towed away and scrapped.
Even though the Sentra was always referred to as a Nissan in the United States, the Datsun brand name appeared in a few places on the early versions. For example, the AM radio. Imagine a staticky “ Mr. Roboto” buzzing out of the mono speaker, fighting with the deafening wind noise heard inside this car at any speed over about 50 mph.
You need this car! The 50 mpg highway mileage took place at not-quite-rapid speeds; I owned one of these cars in the early 1990s and managed a best of about 40 mpg at real-world speeds.
The Toyota Starlet knocked the Sentra off the fuel-economy perch soon after this.
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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Where is this nice Sentra??, i need the Radio, dash clock and some interiors.
Is this car with no wheel for sale ?