Words: Kris Clewell - Photos: Tiziano Niero
The sound of the road under tire has rhythm. In Greg Jones’s Datsun 510 it becomes something close to music.
“I feel like it’s a dance that has been perfected that I can do with that car. And when the road’s clear, it becomes, sometimes a moment that it’s almost like a sense of relaxation or healing that happens.”
His connection to the 510 started with his father. In the seventies his dad owned one, a simple sedan that came to represent freedom and good years. The stories stuck. When Greg went to college, he found a light yellow 1971 two door of his own. It was the first car that felt truly his. He drove it through the canyons of northern Utah, met his wife in it, and learned what it meant to be connected to a machine. Then life changed, and he gave the car away.
Years passed. The memory of that first car lingered until he remembered a blue 510 he had once followed in The Dime Quarterly, a small pre-internet magazine for Datsun enthusiasts. The car, nicknamed The Smurf, had been built by Calvin Dietz of Eugene, Oregon. When Greg discovered it for sale decades later, he bought it immediately. The car he had admired in those early pages was finally his.
The Datsun 510 has always been more than an economy car. In the early seventies it was the underdog that beat the Europeans. John Morton and the BRE team won championships against BMW and Alfa Romeo, proving that simple engineering and balance could outclass prestige. It became a car for people who valued precision and momentum over horsepower. That spirit survives in Greg’s garage.
His car still wears its single-stage enamel paint from the late nineties, faded and honest. The interior is minimal and handmade. The suspension is a mix of parts that serve function before form. Under the hood, though, is something unexpected: a Nissan V6. After the original inline four gave up during a track day, Greg built a 3.4-liter engine using Nissan’s 3.3-liter block with custom pistons and rods. It makes about 220 horsepower, roughly twice the factory output, yet it weighs little more than the stock motor. The swap sits far back in the bay, keeping the balance near perfect.
“It doesn’t make crazy power,” Greg says. “But the torque, the sound, the way it fits in the car, it just works. I’ve got cars that make four times as much, but I keep coming back to this one. A tool you know well is always better than one that’s better.”
On the mountain roads near his Utah home, the 510 comes alive. It turns in neatly, never pushes or slides. Every input is direct. The extra torque makes it playful, and the car still feels light and neutral. It rewards rhythm and restraint, asking for timing more than bravery. Driving it feels like revisiting a memory that still breathes.
At the end of the day, when the car cools in the garage, Greg’s tone softens. “In the end, these are just things,” he says. “We like to think they’re ours, but we’re not here forever. I’m wearing a dead man’s watch right now. Someday someone else will wear it.”
He looks at the car for a long moment before finishing. “I hope when I’m gone, someone else owns this thing. I hope they drive it, break it, fix it, and keep the story going.”
The 510 sits quiet, its simple lines still purposeful fifty years later. For Greg Jones it isn’t about ownership or performance. It’s about the motion that connects him to his father, his past, and to the small car that turned driving into a dance.
