Photo: Kleber Silva
Not many people talk about this, but Nissan made some extremely cool-looking trucks. The Datsun 620 is one example, so nice that there's even a Pandem widebody kit available for it.
It's got the flat nose of an early Silvia, the strong chin of a sports car, and four round headlights, like any classic should. It's a shame that car-based pickup imports never caught on, partly due to the isolationist tactics of the government.
Were it not for the "chicken tax," maybe the American truck would be obsolete, and we'd all carry our drywall in Nissans and Hondas. And if that happened, Nissan would eventually find a way to make a sports truck out of the Skyline series.
We can already imagine it. Right after the rise in popularity of the El Camino, Nissan responds with something reliable and affordable, just like they did with the muscle car-rivaling Datsun 240Z. It wouldn't have a turbo engine at first, but the inline-6 would get the job done just fine.
After a while, some crazy American racing team would put a bunch of go-fast parts on the Skyline truck and decimate all the V8 boys on track. This would give birth to a new niche and sub-culture, low-rider trucks that work on construction sites by day and race during the nights.
I mean, can you imagine the R32, R33, and R34 as pickups? You probably can, because for at least one of those, we already have a rendering. And today, the R35 joins them thanks to the good work of Brazilian rendering artist Kleber Silva. He's been busy challenging our expectations of what a pickup truck is this week.
The R35's face perhaps looks a little out of place on a truck, but then most Nissan designs don't make any sense at first. What really gets to us though is the fact that the rest of the bodywork isn't particularly Godzilla-worthy.
Were it not for the "chicken tax," maybe the American truck would be obsolete, and we'd all carry our drywall in Nissans and Hondas. And if that happened, Nissan would eventually find a way to make a sports truck out of the Skyline series.
We can already imagine it. Right after the rise in popularity of the El Camino, Nissan responds with something reliable and affordable, just like they did with the muscle car-rivaling Datsun 240Z. It wouldn't have a turbo engine at first, but the inline-6 would get the job done just fine.
After a while, some crazy American racing team would put a bunch of go-fast parts on the Skyline truck and decimate all the V8 boys on track. This would give birth to a new niche and sub-culture, low-rider trucks that work on construction sites by day and race during the nights.
I mean, can you imagine the R32, R33, and R34 as pickups? You probably can, because for at least one of those, we already have a rendering. And today, the R35 joins them thanks to the good work of Brazilian rendering artist Kleber Silva. He's been busy challenging our expectations of what a pickup truck is this week.
The R35's face perhaps looks a little out of place on a truck, but then most Nissan designs don't make any sense at first. What really gets to us though is the fact that the rest of the bodywork isn't particularly Godzilla-worthy.
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