The early history of Nissan was irrevocably wrapped in the Datsun name - which made a return in 2013. Japanese carmaker DAT was founded by the team of Den, Aoyama and Takeuchi in 1914, and started making cars in very small numbers. In 1931, one of its smaller cars was christened the Datson; when the Nissan conglomerate took over in 1933, it tweaked the name to Datsun, to honour the sun on the Japanese flag.

Some of Nissan's early cars were copies of Austins – including the Seven – but during the 1950s and ‘60s it started building its own designs. Nissan flourished during the 1960s and '70s, following the success of halo products, such as the Fairlady and 240Z. In 1986, Datsun was dropped from all export markets (it was erased from the UK in 1984 after a couple of crossover Nissan-Datsun years) and all the cars became known as Nissans instead. Nissan became a UK manufacturer in 1986 with the opening of a new factory in Washington - with the 1990 Primera becoming the first fully UK-manufactured car from the company.