Rewind Review: California Dreamin’ in the 1986½ Nissan Hardbody Pickup!
Nissan’s first American-penned design became one of the industry’s most-loved pickup trucks.
The clutch pedal drops to the floor with the lightest of pressure. The shift knob, worn glossy by four decades of use, feels soft and smooth under my palm. It’s a long throw into first, but the lever lands with satisfying tactility. I signal my departure—CLACK-tik, CLACK-tik, CLACK-tik—and tap the accelerator a couple of times to get the revs up. Ssszooom-sssszooom, whispers the old Nissan V-6. I slowly engage the clutch, and the old Nissan Hardbody eases itself into motion.
0:00 / 0:00
If it sounds like I’m magnifying the mundane and savoring every sensation, well, I am. I’ve waited nearly half a lifetime for this drive, though it seems like just yesterday when I stared out a classroom window at the dreary New York winter. All the leaves were brown, the sky was gray, and as the teacher droned on, my mind was 3,000 miles away: I was cruising the cloudless California coast in a 4x4 pickup truck not unlike this 1986½ Nissan Hardbody, a tanned western beauty at my side, her blonde hair blowing haphazardly in the breeze, the tinkle of her laugh just audible over the rush of the wind and the hum of engine.
And now here we are, me and the Hardbody, both 30-odd years past our prime, moseying toward the beach in La Jolla. It’s MotorTrend’s non-blonde photographer Renz Dimaandal beside me, his short hair gelled beyond the ability to ruffle, and come to think of it, I never have heard him laugh. But the breeze is cool as the V-6 hums, and the skies are a perfect Kodacolor blue. For the millionth time in the 25 years since I moved to California, I marvel at the magic of the West Coast. Life out here is good.
The Hardbody Pickup: Nissan’s California Dream
California has long rivaled Detroit as the incubator of American car culture, and when Nissan decided to establish a design center on U.S. shores in 1979, it chose San Diego. Like so many West Coast transplants, Nissan wanted to reinvent itself, breaking with its Datsun past and forging an identity as a design-focused automaker. Nissan Design International (now Nissan Design America) spent its formative years producing futuristic concept cars with a Syd Mead vibe.
It’s difficult to imagine what inspired Nissan HQ to give NDI the new pickup truck as its first production job, but it was a stroke of genius. At the time, Japanese trucks looked like either scaled-down full-size pickups or cars with beds. NDI threw away tradition and came up with something new and different, and the (literally) edgy styling of the 1986½ Nissan Pickup drew immediate praise. For the record, “Hardbody” never was an official name, though it featured in ads and brochures from the get-go, a reference to the truck’s double-walled bed.
It’s a good thing the design worked so well, because we ended up looking at it for a long time. The Hardbody stayed in Nissan showrooms for a dozen years, and yet its visual appeal endured. In an August 1993 MotorTrend comparison test in which Nissan tied Isuzu for last place, we moaned about the dated interior and the heavy steering—sound familiar? But we still loved with the way it looked: “The squared-off lines and sharp creases still stand out from the crowd.”
Stuck in the 1980s
Oh, but that dated interior. I’m staring at it now, and the squared-off dash and corduroy-like fabric are about as ’80s as a Bangles cassette. Ditto for the instrument panel with its orange-on-black color scheme and graph-paper motif. Back in the early 1980s, several Japanese automakers used a similar background for their ads. The coolest detail may be the fuel gauges: There are two, a main F-to-E gauge and a second of equal size that measures only the last quarter of a tank. As inexplicable as the second gauge’s presence is its sunken mounting, while all the other instruments sit proud of the panel.
I glance back at the rear of the King Cab. “No one could sit back there,” Dimaandal had opined a few minutes earlier as he snapped pics of the inward-facing fold-down seats. “I did once,” I said, crawling in to demonstrate. What I didn’t tell him is the role those seats played in my own California dream: When my very pregnant then-girlfriend brought me out west to meet her parents, they picked us up in their 4x2 Hardbody, and that was where I sat, knees intertwined with those of my future ex-mother-in-law for the 45-minute drive from the airport. It was one of the most uncomfortable rides of my life, and not because of the toddler-sized seats.
Horses Gone Out to Graze
Away the Nissan and I go into gentle San Diego traffic. How quick is this Hardbody? Don’t know, don’t care. The example I’m driving is the sporty SE model powered by—wait, I’ll let the original sales brochure tell you: “At the very heart of the new Nissan SE King Cab 4x4 beats one of the most technologically sophisticated engines in production today.” Sophisticated meant single overhead camshafts and throttle-body fuel injection, but you have to love the way ’80s brochure writers made every factoid into a promise of limitless possibility, just like California. At 140 hp and 166 lb-ft of torque, the brochure breathlessly points out, this was the most powerful compact pickup you could buy.
The Nissan Hardbody I’m driving belongs to Nissan Design America and was restored for display rather than driving, and the engine feels as if a couple dozen of those horses have wandered off to graze. Still, I know from driving Nissan designer Hiren Patel’s similarly powered 1988 Pathfinder SE that these things aren’t exactly drag racers. I couldn’t find instrumented testing data on the Hardbody in the MotorTrend archive; suffice it to say that if you try to outrun a bear in a Nissan Hardbody, you better hope he has a bum leg.
What Makes a Design Classic?
What is it about the Nissan Hardbody pickup’s styling that has endured so well, staying fresh enough to inspire the current-generation Frontier? It was a combination of daring design and good timing. In the early 1980s, lifted four-wheel-drive trucks were the hot new thing. Mickey Thompson introduced indoor 4x4 stadium racing in 1979, the same year Toyota unveiled the first factory-built 4x4 version of its pickup truck. With Ronald Reagan and the ever-changing procession of his Soviet counterparts rattling their atomic sabers, nuclear annihilation felt like a real possibility to ’80s youth, and a bug-out 4x4 as your daily driver seemed like a good idea. In August 1985, with Back to the Future still on the big screen and Marty McFly lusting after that gloss-black Toyota 4x4, Nissan shared the first photos of its new truck. The Hardbody was futuristic and unique, and the motoring world was smitten.
The beach can’t be too far off; I’m seeing fewer buildings through the windshield, more trees and sky, and the breeze is carrying the first faint aromas of the sea. I’ve been loafing along, but my limited sense of journalistic integrity suggests I should be able to convey more about the Hardbody experience beyond what shifting into first feels like. I crank up my speed for a couple of corners, and the truck heels over so far that I brace for the fenders to grab a handful of the oversize tires. They don’t, and I beat back my impatient inner New Yorker and resume my California chill.
Besides, what strikes me more than the way the Hardbody truck drives is the presence it projects. I consider myself something of a Nissan Truck Guy, having recently ended a very enjoyable assignment with our long-term 2023 Nissan Frontier SV 4x4. My Frontier was way bigger than this Hardbody—half a foot wider and taller, and nearly a yard longer—and yet this old truck feels just as beefy and burly. Not unwieldy; that was the magic of these Japanese pickups. Where domestic trucks exercised every arm and leg muscle, everything in the imports moved with easy, carlike precision. Small and meek the Hardbody was not, nor was it a Venice Muscle Beach workout to drive.
Another Dream, Another Reality
The cool breeze and the view over the Nissan’s flat hood bring back another memory of my westward journey. It’s a couple of days after that chilly ride home with my girlfriend’s parents, just her and me in the Hardbody now, a young couple on an aimless nighttime cruise around Tucson, Arizona. We’re eager and excited, on the brink of starting a family and innocent of the realities that will soon crush down relentlessly upon us. A bank thermometer reads 85 degrees, and I marvel at how cool the night feels. That temp back home in New York would be murder.
“It’s a dry heat,” my girlfriend says, flashing the warm, easy smile that I’ll see less and less often. California is now just one year in our future, and the road ahead will be anything but smooth, but we’re on our way.
Today, at the wheel of this other Hardbody, I am older, wiser, fatter, and grayer. The girlfriend is now my ex-wife, and the baby she was carrying is now a Columbia grad living out his New York dream with a delightful young woman I quietly hope will become my daughter-in-law. He’s grown into a wonderful human being, as has his younger brother, and it seems unreal that the East Coast is as foreign and wondrous to my sons as California once was to me.
I did make it to Los Angeles, and true to the cliche, I reinvented myself. I got my dream job as an automotive writer. I started saying “the” before freeway route numbers. I even married a California gal, a Ventura County native with long strawberry blonde hair and a laugh that rings like music. She still looks like a goddess to me.
Last Sensations
I guide the lovely old Nissan Hardbody pickup onto a warm California beach, roll to a stop, and savor these last sensations from the motoring world of long ago: the Jello-like quiver of the shift boot as I push the lever into neutral, the slight resistance of the key before it rises out of the Run detent and drops into Off, the tired sigh as the V-6 ceases its toil. The soft thwack of the door opening, the crunch of my shoe on the sand, the gentle tink-tink-tink of cooling metal.
Hot truck, warm sun, endless ocean: Is this really my life, or am I still back in New York, dreaming my way out of a cold, colorless winter day?
No—the bright red 1986½ Nissan Hardbody is really here, and so are the clear blue skies, and so is the Pacific, and so am I. The California dream is real, and life out here is good. It is so, so good.
Our thanks to Matt Anderson, transportation curator of The Henry Ford, and Hiren Patel of Nissan Design America, for their help with Hardbody history.
After a two-decade career as a freelance writer, Aaron Gold joined MotorTrend’s sister publication Automobile in 2018 before moving to the MT staff in 2021. Aaron is a native New Yorker who now lives in Los Angeles with his spouse, too many pets, and a cantankerous 1983 GMC Suburban.
Read More
