A Datsun revival could actually work with Nissan's eco know-how

GREAT news! Datsun - a brand you thought had died back in the days of Spandau Ballet and bad leggings - is back.

I am, unfortunately, a bit too young to remember a time when you stroll into a car showroom and drive out in a gleaming new Cherry or Bluebird, but as evocative automotive names go it's not exactly one I've brought up to recall fondly. Google the Datsun Sunny and it'll become immediately obvious why I'd go for a Golf instead.

True, I'll admit the original 240Z sports coupe is deservedly called a classic car, but it on its own can't save Datsun's reputation for being a maker of crushingly dull motors.

So you're probably expecting me to head into town, get my shoes polished and prepare to give plans to revive the name a right old kicking.

But I reckon the Nissan Renault partnership, a sort of Franco-Japanese alliance aiming for automotive world domination, is on the ball and could actually pull off reviving a rubbish brand best known for building boring hatchbacks to boringly high standards.

Take, for instance, Nissan itself, which realised a couple of years ago nobody was buying saloons anymore. It pulled both the Primera and the QX out of the showrooms and instead brought you the Qashqai, a sort of off-roader meets hatchback thingymebob whose name nobody can spell or pronounce properly. A car which you, the great British public, responded to buying them in their thousands. The Nissan Qashqai is absolutely everywhere because you love it.

Nissan then decided, using all the money they'd made from Qashqai sales, to fit wheels to an SR-71 spyplane and go racing at Le Mans. While the car they've created, the Deltawing, looks like something Darth Vader would drive it shows they've got the finger on the pulse, because they're using it to prove small, lightweight cars are better than big, heavy ones. It might only have a 1.6 litre engine but - because it's only got half the drag of a normal racer - that's all it needs.

Admittedly, we're not all Stars Wars villains so you probably won't see the Deltawing for sale any time soon, but what Nissan might be offering you instead by reviving Datsun is the sort of reliability and ruggedness Qashqai buyers love, but with added eco-friendliness and a lower price.

A Deltawing-inspired Datsun with racing-inspired aerodynamics, eco-friendly yet unexpectedly exciting engines, low weight and - crucially - an even lower price? That's a Sunny successor even I'd go for...