Rare, Classic Cars: The Nissan S-Cargo

It's quirky; it's odd--and yes, it's a 1989 Nissan S-Cargo. It might come as a shock to you that this is a van, not a car. We can hypothesize that it got squashed somewhere--perhaps in a mini Arc de Triomphe, since this oddball's design was inspired by the Citroën 2CV delivery van 'Fourgonnette'.

The 1989 S-Cargo is one of Nissan's Pike cars during the early 90s. Its name, which means "small cargo," is actually a French wordplay for the word "escargot" (or snail). And not only is it almost shaped like a snail, but Nissan also went so far as to make the model’s logo resemble a snail.

Pike cars were a special project of Nissan. And their main goal was to create cars that were small and visually interesting. All of these vehicles were produced in Oppama Japan, known as the Pike Factory.

According to Road and Track, the first Pike car was the Be-1. Soon, it was followed by the Figaro and Pao. The latter was introduced in 1987 at the Tokyo Motor Show. And while the Pao had a more utilitarian appeal, the S-Cargo went in a different direction: it had the appearance of a cute van squashed in different directions.

The S-Cargo was only sold via reservations, with only 8,000 S-Cargo models produced from 1989 to 1991.