Patrol 60 Series

In October 1960 Nissan replaced the Jeep-like 4W66 Patrol with the 60 Series, and then built it for twenty years. Wikipedia lists the soft-top 60 on a 2,200 mm wheelbase and the G60 on 2,500 mm, with an extra-long H60 that could seat eight. Hardtops (KG60) followed in 1963. Under every one sat Nissan's P-series straight-six, a three-speed gearbox and a two-speed transfer case with part-time four-wheel drive. It was Nissan's answer to Toyota's FJ40, and from 1962 to 1969 it was also the only Nissan-badged vehicle sold in America.

THE P-SERIES SIX

The engine is the 60's whole personality. Wikipedia traces the P back to Nissan's pre-war Type A, a licence-built Graham-Paige design, by way of the sidevalve NC six it replaced. The P kept the same 3,956 cc and 85.7 x 114.3 mm bore and stroke but moved the valves overhead. It launched at 125 PS at 3,400 rpm, rose to 135 PS and reached 145 PS with the 1965 changes. It has bathtub-shaped combustion chambers and a fully balanced seven-bearing crank. Later versions were badged P40, and a fire-service PF version got a stronger alternator and a block heater.

It's a long-stroke truck engine, and it sounds like one. Australian 60s were rated at 93 kW, according to GoAuto, and Bring a Trailer's listings quote 145 hp for 1960s US trucks, 130 hp for 1971 Colombian trucks and 128 hp with 217 lb-ft for the last four-speed trucks of 1980–82. The same basic six carried on in the 160/MQ as the P40 and in Spain's 260 until 1993, which is why Patrol people still recognise its rocker cover.

DATSUN'S COWBOY TRUCK

Canadian and American buyers could get a Patrol from 1962 until 1969, sold through Datsun dealers. Nissan's US heritage page says the Patrol was the only vehicle sold and marketed in the US as a Nissan before 1983. Datsun's first American TV commercial was shot in 1963 for the Patrol. When the company heard that Roy Rogers liked the truck, it offered him a Patrol and two pickups instead of a fee, and Goodwood says the singing cowboy went on to front Datsun's low-budget TV ads.

Restorer SNLC, who cites twenty years with these trucks, wrote on IH8MUD that America got short-wheelbase L60 soft-tops and KL60 hardtops, all with a three-speed, a twin-stick transfer case and a light-duty C216 rear axle. Dealers fitted Warn free-wheeling hubs and a Koenig PTO winch driven from a Nissan PTO box. Then Nissan stopped. Curbside Classic says it's unclear why imports ended after 1969. The next Patrol-based vehicle sold in North America was the Infiniti QX56 of 2010, a cousin of the Y62.

SIMPSON DESERT, JONGAS AND COLOMBIA

Nissan Australia claims the 60 was the first vehicle to drive across the Simpson Desert, in 1962, and re-enacted the trip in 2012 to promote the Y62. Goodwood notes that a Toyota Land Cruiser support vehicle may have got there first, so treat the claim as marketing history. In India, the Vehicle Factory Jabalpur began assembling the Patrol as the Jonga around 1969. Wikipedia says it served the Indian Army until the late 1990s. In Bangladesh's Chittagong Hill Tracts, Patrol 60s and Jongas still work as Chander Gari, carrying passengers and produce. They're the trucks in this page's photos.

The 60 outlived its own replacement in some places. Bring a Trailer has sold Colombian-market Patrols titled as 1980 and 1982 'LG-61' trucks that keep the 60's body but use a four-speed. Colombia also keeps restorations going: SNLC's 1964 got new floor pans and an OEM steering-box seal from there. By the time the coil-sprung Y60 arrived in 1987, Japanese production of the 60 had been over for seven years, and the Y61 that followed shared nothing with it but the name. Nissan's Heritage Collection in Nashville keeps a 1967 found as a barn find on an Iowa farm.