For several decades, three of Japan’s largest automakers — Nissan, Toyota and Honda — based their American operations from headquarters offices in the South Bay.
I’ve written about Toyota, which moved its headquarters to 190th st. and Western Ave. in 1967, and Honda, which moved to Gardena in 1963 and to Torrance in 1984. That leaves Nissan, which had become the first of the trio to move to the South Bay by establishing its U.S. headquarters offices in Gardena in 1960.
By then, the company had been in business in Japan, under a couple of different names, since 1911. Its origin can be traced to the Kaishinsha Motor Works, founded by Masujiro Hashimoto. Its first model in 1914 was named the DAT, after the initials of the surnames of the company’s primary investors.
In 1918, the company introduced a new model called the “DATson,” son of DAT. Its spelling later was changed to Datsun, which would remain the company’s car name brand for decades. The Nissan name came about during a 1934 corporate reorganization, formed by the abbreviation of Nihon Sangyo, the car manufacturer’s new holding company name, on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
The company’s fortunes continued to increase as a result of its production of vehicles for the U.S. Korean War effort. After the war, Nissan began to look toward increasing its international presence.
In early January 1958, Nissan sent its first autos to the U.S. Three models of the company’s Datsun 1000 compact car arrived at the Port of Los Angeles in early January 1958, on their way to being exhibited at the Los Angeles Imported Auto Show at the Shrine Auditorium.
Two years later, the company established its first U.S. headquarters, Nissan Motor Corp. in U.S.A., at 137 E. Alondra Blvd. Sales grew steadily despite American consumers’ wariness of the smaller, more lower-priced autos.
Two new models introduced in successive years would become mainstays of the company’s sales in the 1970s: the Datsun 510 economy sedan in 1967, and the venerated Datsun 240Z sports car in 1969. The new models together with the arrival of the gasoline shortages during the 1970s helped to raise the sale of Datsuns to record levels.
Business was so good in the U.S. that Nissan felt the need to expand its corporate headquarters. After a lengthy search, the company settled on an irregular 6.5-acre parcel of land at the southwest corner of 190th and Figueroa streets in Carson for its main building. It would become a local landmark, clearly visible from from the nearby intersection of the 110 and 405 freeways,
The executive tower was built in the shape of a trapezoid, a symbol of good fortune in Japanese culture. The glass-walled 10-story structure with its unusual flared outcropping at the top cost $4.5 million to build. It was designed by Los Angeles architectural firm Kajima Associates and built by contractor William Simpson Co.
The new facility was dedicated on May 11, 1972. It would grow to include nearby buildings across Figueroa, which later would become the site of a Kaiser Permanente health complex.
In 1981, Nissan’s parent company in Japan made a decision that cost millions of dollars in signage alone, and made many of its American dealerships unhappy. It decided to drop the “Datsun” name from its car models and dealer names, rebranding everything it produced as “Nissan.”
Dealers initially resisted, wondering why the company would change a brand name that had been built over decades, but the company’s leaders insisted. The rebranding became official in the U.S. on Oct. 1, 1984, when the company’s new 1985 autos were introduced, all bearing the Nissan name for the first time.
A few months earlier, Nissan began manufacturing small trucks at its new factory in Smyrna, Tennessee. Car manufacturing would follow there with initial production of the new Sentra model in 1984.
Just over 20 years later, in late October 2005, rumors began to circulate that Nissan would be vacating its Carson headquarters and moving executives to a new one in Franklin, Tennessee. Franklin is located just south of Nashville and a few miles east of the Smyrna plant.
After initially denying the move, Nissan executives made the news official on Nov. 10, 2005, citing the high cost of doing business in California compared to Tennessee. By July 2006, the Carson headquarters building was mostly vacant, its employees now operating in temporary offices in Tennessee. (A new corporate headquarters building in Franklin opened in 2008.)
The Carson site didn’t stay vacant for long. In September 2006, Kearney Real Estate Co. purchased the entire Nissan property, which had grown to more than 41 acres, for an undisclosed amount. The company then portioned out its new holdings to a variety of businesses, rather than pursuing a single new occupant.
The most visible part of the property, the 10-story former headquarters building, went to tire manufacturing and distribution company Tireco Inc. Founded in Torrance as K.H.H. Enterprises in 1972, Tireco moved into the former Nissan headquarters in 2008, and its sign now shines atop the building just as first Datsun and then Nissan signs formerly did.
Nine years after Nissan left, Toyota announced it was moving its U.S. corporate headquarters from Torrance to Plano, Texas, a process it completed in 2017. That leaves American Honda in Torrance as the last remaining Japanese automaker with its U.S. headquarters in the South Bay.
Sources:
Daily Breeze archives.
“Datsun 1000 Sedan: 1958,” Cartype website.
Los Angeles Times archives.
Nissan USA website.
Tireco Inc. website.
Torrance Press-Herald archives.
Wikipedia.
