Professional writer Dan Baum*, the guy who originally suggested this blog, sent me the pictures of the pink and white car below with the note that one couple owns all six Nissan Figaros in Colorado. Hmm, that's understandable in a way. The Figaro has an affable good humor about it that appeals even to people who don't normally notice cars, and it appeals even more to collectors. Like the bathtub Porsches and bathtub Ramblers four decades before it, the Figaro looks like she might follow you home if you whistled (and yes, we know Tesla already has a car that will do something close to that). The Figaro and her sister cars, the Be-1, Pao and S-Cargo, were all developed at the end of a period of safe and stale design at Nissan in the late 1980s. The aim was to cast the company's offerings in a new light by emphasizing distinctive design in a line of cars to be made in small series. These Pike Cars, named for the factory that was dedicated to spearheading these limited runs of boutique designs, are attracting attention again today, in an era of computer-generated automotive forms often differentiated only by the absurdity of their graphic fright-mask grille and lighting designs...
The Figaro, produced for the model year 1991, was actually the last in the Pike series. By that time, the other Pike cars had set the chassis formula with their front wheels driven by small, transverse four cylinder engines. The Figaro body design, credited like the others to Naoki Sakai*, wraps this urban transit econo package in what Nissan called a "fixed profile convertible" (you could also say it was a coupe with a very big folding sunroof) which recalled that first bathtub Rambler from 1950, the German Goggomobil coupe, and various Fiats and Renaults. Significantly, however, it recalled the feel of those cars without copying any of them. Sold on a lottery basis as a sort of urban lifestyle accessory, the car featured leather seats and upgraded the 987cc engine of its Pike stablemates Be-1 and Pao with turbocharging which upped power by about 50% (it shared their front disc brakes). But the driving experience was not the point; it was instead the cheeky attitude expressed in the simple, almost naive contours and details, and in the slogan "back to the future."
Nissan planned for a production of 8,000 units, but had to expand this to over 20,000 to keep their potential customers satisfied. The success of the car may have cleared the way for VW's somewhat less subtle "back to the future" effort, the New Beetle.
The very first Pike car, the Be-1 ("be the first") was shown as a prototype in 1987, sold on a lottery basis, and made only as a 1988 model. Around 10,000 units were produced...
The deft clarity of details like the wrap-around rear window and incised tail lights is worthy of a more expensive car, and the simple oval headlights appeared later on products from other manufacturers, during a brief period of sanity before the current craze for torturing innocent lighting fixtures and air intakes into threatening Transformer shapes.
The next effort was the Pao, a hatchback that raised the cheap and cheerful utility theme to a level of reverse snobbery. It was built for two years starting in 1989, and sold more than any other Pike car, at a bit more than 51,600 units. The flat windshield, embossed sides and external door hinges emphasize the theme (or maybe the pose) of spartan utility...
The S-Cargo shown below took the cheerful utilitarian theme firmly in the direction of "zany". In that regard the little 1.5 liter van (the bigger engine made more torque for hauling stuff) may have been the ideological precursor of today's Nissan Cube. Even the name is a pun; allegedly standing for Small Cargo, it also sounds like Escargot, French for the snail which became the nickname of the slow, useful Citroen Deux Chevaux.*
Production figures during the two-year run starting with the 1988 Tokyo Motor Show announcement have been stated as 8,000 to 12,000 (you'd think it would be hard to lose track of something like the S-Cargo). Design critics, even those who liked the cars, have credited them with being the first postmodern cars. I wouldn't go so far as that*, but would suggest that they may have marked Peak Innovation at Nissan Design.
*Footnotes: Dan Baum has written Nine Lives, an engaging history of New Orleans told through the stories of 9 survivors of Hurricane Katrina, the more recent Gun Guys, and other high-quality stuff you won't find on this blog. The Figaro is the only Pike car which has another designer than Sakai listed in the credits: Shoji Takahashi. For notes on Nissan design collaborations with Zagato (including some pretty zany ones) you might try "Whatever Happened to Nissans Bodied by Zagato?", our post for September 25, 2016. For some insights into the form of the Citroen 2CV which inspired S-Cargo, see "Architect-Designed Cars: Part 1 of 2" from May 7, 2017. And for my candidate for the first postmodern car, you'd need to check out "The Italian Jobs Part 2" from Feburary 27, 2016. Giving you the whole title would give the story away...
Photo credits:
Top & 2nd: Dan Baum
3rd photo through bottom: wikimedia
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