Nissan Australia history: Clayton to e-POWER

Nissan Australia history is a story with two halves. For about a quarter of a century the company built cars in Melbourne ¹. Since local production ended it has been an importer, but it has kept a factory here all the same, and that plant now makes parts that go into Nissans around the world.

The first version of this post was largely the company's own marketing copy and a list of models. This refreshed version tells the story in order, with the sources behind each date and number, from the first imports to the plant still working in Dandenong South today.

Where Nissan Australia history begins

Nissan vehicles were being imported into Australia as early as the 1930s ¹. The modern business took shape in the early 1960s, when the Australian industrialist Lawrence Hartnett came across the brand and took over its local sales ¹.

Local assembly followed quickly. From 1966, Sydney-based Pressed Metal Corporation assembled up to 20,000 Bluebirds a year for the Australian market ¹. In those years the cars wore the Datsun name, which Nissan used on its exports for decades.

Clayton: the Volkswagen factory that became Nissan's

The centre of Nissan's Australian manufacturing was a factory in Clayton, in Melbourne's south-east, that had been built for Volkswagen.

From 1968 Nissan was a tenant of the Volkswagen plant, and Volkswagen's Australian subsidiary, Motor Producers Limited, built Datsun vehicles there ¹. The arrangement soon favoured the newcomer. In 1971 Nissan sold twice as many vehicles in Australia as Volkswagen did, and assembly was expanded again in 1972 ¹.

When Volkswagen no longer wanted to invest in the plant, Nissan agreed to take over Motor Producers Limited ¹. For a time it even assembled Volkswagens: Nissan was responsible for the local kit assembly of Volkswagen vehicles from April 1976 until March 1977 ¹.

Building cars under the Nissan name

Independent production at Clayton began in 1977 with the Datsun 200B ¹. Over the next decade the factory added more models. By 1986 the Skyline and Pintara had joined the Gazelle and Pulsar on the line ¹, and the Pintara was built locally from 1986 to 1992 ¹.

The Bluebird and the Pintara

The Bluebird is one of the cars most associated with Nissan's Australian factory. The 910 series Bluebird was built at Clayton from 1981 to 1986 ². Australia used the Bluebird name from 1981 to 1985, and the local car received its own rear-wheel-drive facelift for 1984 and 1985 ².

In 1986 the Pintara replaced it ². Later the Pintara was also sold under the Bluebird name, alongside the Pintara badge, until 1992 ².

The car pictured is an overseas Bluebird of the same era. The generation that followed the 910 in other markets, the U11, kept the boxy styling of its predecessor even though nearly every panel changed ².

The end of local car building

The late 1980s and early 1990s were hard for car makers in Australia, and Nissan's numbers fell quickly. Production was nearly 58,000 vehicles in 1990 and fewer than 36,000 in 1991 ¹. In 1992 a final 20,231 vehicles were built, and Nissan's car production in Australia ended ¹.

The factory's closure ended a run of local car building that had begun with kit assembly in the 1960s ¹, and from then on every new Nissan sold here was imported from factories overseas, as every new Nissan car still is today.

Nissan was not the last to go. Our history of Australian car manufacturing explains how the whole local industry wound down, and the stories of Ford Australia and Holden in Australia cover the two makers that held on longest.

The casting plant that stayed

Nissan kept one factory. In 1982 it set up a manufacturing subsidiary and built a casting plant with it ¹. In the mid-1980s about 90 percent of the foundry's production was exported ¹.

That plant is the Nissan Casting Australia Plant, known as NCAP, in Dandenong South, Victoria ³. In May 2026 Nissan marked its 44 years of operation during Australian Made Week ³. According to Nissan, the plant:

• employs more than 192 staff and contractors ³;
• produces 1.2 million die-cast aluminium parts and towbars each year ³;
• received Australian Made certification in 2025 ³.

Many of its parts carry a small raised kangaroo to mark where they were made ³.

How the plant has changed

A 2017 GoAuto visit gives a picture of how far the plant has come ⁵. It began with gravity-fed and low-pressure die-casting of parts such as cylinder heads, made only for export to Japan ⁵. High-pressure die-casting and gearbox parts came next ⁵. Machining and assembly followed, then drivetrain parts, and finally components for electric vehicles ⁵.

At the time of that visit the plant was a 90,000 square metre site ⁵. It expected to make more than 2.6 million die-cast aluminium parts and over 16,000 towbars that year, and it exported to four countries, with Japan the original market ⁵. Its parts for the LEAF and for Nissan's early e-Power cars included the water jacket and the inverter case, as well as the stator housing ⁵. The plant's managing director told GoAuto that those parts were "only made in Australia" ⁵.

The plant then ran 13 casting machines at about 80 per cent of capacity, with a workforce of nearly 192 people, 149 of them permanent ⁵. GoAuto also reported that it was the only Nissan plant outside Japan with its own engineering capability ⁵, which helps explain why it was trusted with parts for the company's electrified cars.

The yearly output Nissan quotes today, 1.2 million parts and towbars ³, is lower than the 2017 figure. The sources do not explain the difference, which may reflect a change in the mix of parts made.

Making parts for e-POWER

The plant's biggest job today is for Nissan's e-POWER system, a hybrid that drives like an electric car but never needs to be plugged in ⁴. In e-POWER, a petrol engine generates electricity and an electric motor drives the wheels; in Nissan's words, "the engine never directly powers the wheels" ⁴.

Nissan says NCAP is the sole global source of core components for its latest 5-in-1 e-POWER system ³. In September 2025 Nissan announced that the Qashqai would move to an e-POWER-only line-up, and said every new MY26 Qashqai e-POWER around the world uses this Australian-made technology ⁴. The plant also makes 3-in-1 components for the driveline of the Nissan LEAF ³.

Its parts support a long list of models, from the Navara and Patrol to several INFINITI SUVs ³.

Finance and the company today

Nissan Australia is headquartered in the Melbourne suburb of Mulgrave ¹. In 2009 it launched Nissan Financial Services as a wholly owned subsidiary to provide finance to its dealers and customers ¹, and in 2013 that business set up a New Zealand subsidiary ¹.

If you are weighing up finance on a new or used car, compare a dealer offer against your own figures with our car loan calculator before you sign.

The Z cars in Australia

No history of Nissan here would be complete without the Z. The sports car line has run through seven generations ⁶:

• S30 240Z, 260Z and 280Z, from 1969 to 1978 ⁶;
• S130 280ZX, from 1978 to 1983 ⁶;
• Z31 300ZX, from 1983 to 1989 ⁶;
• Z32 300ZX, from 1989 to 2000 ⁶;
• Z33 350Z, from 2002 to 2008 ⁶;
• Z34 370Z, from 2008 to 2021 ⁶;
• RZ34 Z, in production since 2022 ⁶.

The early cars were sold as Datsuns, and in the United States 1984 was the only model year to carry the "Datsun 300ZX" name before Nissan dropped Datsun for 1985 ⁶. The Z31 sold more than 70,000 units and is the second best-selling Z-car ⁶. The 280ZX before it set the Z-car sales record, with 86,007 sold in its first year ⁶, and American Z-car sales reached one million in 1990 ⁶.

The Z was a global car rather than an Australian-built one, but it shaped how buyers here saw the brand. A Datsun badge on a 240Z meant something very different from the same badge on a 200B family sedan, and buyers here could choose either from the same brand.

Nissan's performance history reaches well beyond the Z. Our story on the Nissan Skyline GT-R from Fast and Furious covers its most famous film car.

Buying a classic Nissan

Locally built Bluebirds and Pintaras, and the earlier Z cars, now have a following. If you are looking at one:

• Check for rust in the sills, floors and around the windscreen, where older cars from this era tend to hide it.
• Ask for records of any engine or gearbox rebuild, and of when the timing belt or chain was last serviced.
• Confirm what you are buying. Locally built cars, imports and converted grey imports can look similar but carry different parts and paperwork.
• Run a history check for money owing and write-off records before you hand over any money.

Our safe buying guide covers the scams to avoid, and you can browse cars on Car Domain once you know what you want.

For the company's own account of the plant, read Nissan Australia's Australian Made Week release, and for more on the factory years, see the Nissan Australia entry on Wikipedia.

Sources

1. Wikipedia, Nissan Australia, accessed 2 November 2026
2. Wikipedia, Nissan Bluebird, accessed 2 November 2026
3. Nissan Australia, Nissan celebrates local manufacturing team during Australian Made Week, accessed 2 November 2026
4. Nissan Australia, Nissan QASHQAI goes all e-POWER: hybrid re-invented for every Australian driver, accessed 2 November 2026
5. GoAuto, Australian parts vital for Nissan's electrified future, accessed 2 November 2026
6. Wikipedia, Nissan Z-car, accessed 2 November 2026