Nissan has been selling Sentras in the United States since 1982, when it was one of the first models (after the Stanza) to dispense entirely with Datsun branding here. The first generation of Sentra was produced through the 1986 model year, and most of the examples I’ve found in car graveyards have been stripped-down base models with nary an upgrade in the comfort, convenience and/or appearance departments. Today’s Junkyard Gem is a different kind of early Sentra: a top-trim-level coupe packed with just about every option available, found in a Northern California yard recently.
The Sentra XE for ’84 had a more powerful 1.6-liter engine than the base and DLX models: 69 horsepower instead of 59. It was built for the California market and it appears to have spent its entire career in the Golden State. Its birthplace was the Zama plant in Kanagawa Prefecture; Sentra production at the plant in Smyrna, Tennessee, began the following year (but just two-door sedans at first). The highest-mile Nissan I’ve ever found in a junkyard was a second-generation Sentra with 440,299 miles, followed by a 1991 Stanza with 402,505 miles. This car didn’t get anywhere near those numbers, traversing just 131,148 miles during its driving career. One of its early owners, probably the one who bought it from Avis, was a student at De Anza College in Cupertino.
Amazingly, the clock and an AM/FM radio with two speakers were also standard equipment on the Sentra XE that year. The “Sport Accent Stripes,” available only on the XE Coupe, looked sharp. The wheel trim rings and wheel lip moldings cost $155 and $55 extra, respectively.
As was nearly always the case during the 1980s, home-market TV commercials for Japanese cars were far more entertaining than the ones we got here. This one even has a Sunny managing to outrun a machine-gun-armed helicopter (some suspension of disbelief required). Sadly, the Sunny Turbo Leprix never made it across the Pacific.
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