Yutaka Katayama, the former president of what’s now Nissan Motor Co.’s U.S. branch, has died at the age of 105, the Linked Press reports. “Mr. K,” as he was identified to company insiders and Datsun and Nissan fans, established the Z line of sports cars that guaranteed the racing and sales success of the company in the U.S.
Born in 1909 in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan, Mr. K was hired by Nissan Motor Co. in 1935. His initial job was in publicity and he later worked in advertising, generating novel life style-based ad campaigns in an era when, as Nissan puts it, most vehicle ads just “loudly repeated the car’s name over and more than.” Mr. K is also credited with establishing the All-Japan Motor Show in 1954, an sector-wide car show that evolved into today’s Tokyo auto show.
But it was a motorsports victory that turned Mr. K’s profession down the path toward the Z-vehicle. In 1958, 2 Datsun 210s won their class in the grueling Mobilgas Around Australia Trial, a 10,000-mile rally across the unimproved roads of the Outback. Mr. K was the racing group manager, and the class victory spurred Nissan to begin worldwide exports.
In 1960, the organization sent Mr. K to Los Angeles, and he began creating a U.S. dealer ne2rk from scratch. “In the starting, Datsun dealers had no status or prestige, and they were not wealthy either,” Mr. K said. “During the tough occasions, we all gritted our teeth and worked together and we made it through. For me, they are not just dealers but pals. I’m speaking like I’m a huge man, but I owe everything to them.”
As Edmunds so eloquently explained on the occasion of Mr. K’s 100th birthday, Katayama’s dogged determination pushed Datsun to the forefront of foreign vehicles in the U.S. “Katayama constructed Datsun (as the Nissan franchise in America then was called) into a sales powerhouse, personally canvassing each and every town in America and turning used-vehicle dealers and lawnmower repair shops into Datsun franchises. He made Datsun the most important Japanese brand in America, a signature of top quality and innovation instead of inexpensive imitation.”
When Datsun introduced the 510 in 1967, Mr. K’s dealer ne2rk was ready. And with the company’s components bin at his disposal, Mr. K set out to generate Nissan’s most iconic automobile: the 240Z. As Katayama himself recalls:
How can we transpose the relationship between man and horse into the a single between man and automobile? Even following I was sent to Los Angeles in 1960 to establish Nissan Motors in the U.S., this question never ever really left me. Sooner or later I came up with the idea of the Z-car. It was a sports automobile with a sleek physique with a long nose and a short deck, developed so that it could be built utilizing some of the components and components that had been currently employed in our other production vehicles, and it was a automobile that anyone could drive very easily and that would give the driver that amazing feeling of jubilation that comes when car and driver are as one.
In 1970, when the 510-primarily based 240Z reached U.S. shores, it had Mr. K’s fingerprints all more than it. Allow Nissan to clarify Mr. K’s part in creating the company’s initial accurate sports automobile:
Though many, several folks were responsible for the design and engineering of the first generation 240Z, its success in North America can be attributed to Yutaka Katayama, who was president of Nissan’s U.S. operations at the time. Known affectionately as “Mr. K,” he was convinced that the company’s new sports auto design would be a hit in the U.S. There was just one problem—the vehicle’s name: the Fairlady Z.
Mr. K re-christened the car as the 240Z for the U.S. industry, and his wisdom paid off: The Z car was a wild success in motorsports and sales alike, establishing Datsun, and later Nissan, as a key brand with a powerful enthusiast following.
Katayama retired from Nissan in 1977, but he remained a car guy proper via to the finish, earning a spot in the Automotive Hall of Fame in Dearborn, Michigan, in 1998. On his 100th birthday, Mr. K was nevertheless as feisty as ever, criticizing the Nissan 370Z as “so-so,” bemoaning its weight and price tag. “I’d like to have a sports auto like the Miata,” Mr. K stated in 2009. “The Miata is taking the location of the 240Z …. The fun of driving automobiles is the identical as riding a horse. We want a auto that is like riding on horseback. We are producing robots. Robots do not like human manage.”
In Nissan’s own profile of the man, he raised comparable issues about the future of sports vehicles:
A sports vehicle doesn’t have to be luxurious. It must be reasonably priced so that anyone can own 1, it need to be straightforward to maintain, and it need to be some thing that you can get pleasure from without possessing to devote as well considerably money. To attach a price tag tag of $ 50,000 to a sports car just appears uncomfortable to me. You can get any price tag you want if you enhance the number and level of attributes and gear. But if you do not add any added equipment and attributes and you can nevertheless knowledge wonderful exhilaration when driving, then that’s the ideal situation as far as I am concerned.
The beloved Mr. K turned 105 years old in September, attributing his overall health to the 3 liters of water he drank every single day—though he also loved a excellent steak. Nissan developed a 3-portion documentary interview with the automotive legend to commemorate the occasion. It is equal components history lesson, company program, and guide for enthusiastic living.
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In announcing Mr. K’s death, his son, Mitsuo Katayama, mused that his father was happily zooming around in a Datsun Z in heaven, no longer worried about “gas, police or targeted traffic tickets.” That sounds just about ideal.
Yutaka Katayama, “Father of the Datsun Z,” Dead at 105
