The predecessor of present-day Nissan was Jidosha Seizo Co., Ltd., established by Yoshisuke Aikawa in December 1933. As Nissan's founding president, Aikawa had his sights set on promoting the development of Japanese industry through automobile manufacturing. The following year saw the construction of the Yokohama Plant. In April 1935, Nissan launched Japan's first full-scale mass production of automobiles using a belt conveyor system. Nissan switched to purely Japanese-made materials, parts and equipment, and installed press machines for producing body panels, thereby ending the previous practice of hammering out the sheet metal by hand. Those changes dramatically advanced Nissan's and Japan's automotive manufacturing technology overnight.

Catalogs in those days described the Datsun 14 Sedan as a "mass-produced, Japanese-made car of excellent quality; it can be operated on a driver's license obtainable without taking a test, requires no garage and maneuvers easily even on narrow streets." The car was depicted as being ideal for a wide variety of uses such as "commuting to the office, running errands, driving in the countryside, going to the bank and also as a taxi." That aggressive description is indicative of Nissan's ardent determination to expand the market share of its domestically produced cars through direct competition with imported vehicles.