There was a recent e-mail asking about Australian built P411s. The P411
was built in Australia from 1966 to 1968 by a company called PMC, the
Pressed Steel Company, (which was not in any way related to PMC Prince).
PMC also built some Austin and Morris cars and later built MGBs and
Minis too.
The easiest way to tell it is an Australian car is that the quality
isn't as good as a Japanese built 411. Panel fit wasn't as good, also
the panels weren't as straight as the Japanese ones, which were
extremely good for a cheep car. The other way to tell an Australian 411
is that the Aust built cars rust much worse than the Japanese cars.
Unfortunately Australia is the only steel producing country that uses
salt water in the cooling process of sheet metal production, as a result
anything from Australia made of sheet metal is prone to an early rust
death.
The other way to tell an Australian car is the id tag or VIN tag in the
engine bay. The Australian built cars have a dull silver coloured tag
that reads something like this -
DATSUN
type UC
stock no. 411 0001
body no. 000001
engine no. j 000001
p/colour 321 9921
NISSAN MOTOR CO.
(AUSTRALIA) PTY. LTD.
The id tags are riveted in place rather than screwed in place.
After the 411 production finished Nissan Australia bought the old
Volkswagen factory in Clayton Victoria, Clayton built the 510, 610, 810,
910, plus the N12, N13 and N14 Pulsar, a plastic bumpered updated
version of the 510 called the Stanza, the R31 Skyline and a 4 cylinder
version of the R31 Skyline called the Pintara. Clayton closed in 1991.
Alan Bent.
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