I have two must visit locations, both of which will take some pre-planning, and some luck (depending on when you're in Tokyo). The Nissan Heritage Museum and Nismo Omori Factory
This year I was able to get tickets to visit the Nissan Heritage Museum, for me this is my absolute favorite place to visit. This is where you are able to see the History of the Datsun line through the progression into the Nissan brand.
Now, if you've already started taking a mental note of what cool and iconic Datsun/Nissan models you'd want to see, yep they'll be there. But thats not even the best part.
Its the racecars
So many glorious racecars
One word of advice. Sprint. Time goes by so fast and there is so much to see.
Lets start at the beginning. The Nissan Heritage Tour, you can't just show up for and walk through. You have to apply for a ticket(s). Now, the tickets are free but the days and times are super limited. Each month they open the tour date for the following month, and in my experience (at least for during Tokyo Auto Salon) these tickets sell out super fast. For January all the tickets for the entire month were gone within 8hrs of them opening the tour dates for the month. So, if you're only visiting for a week that'll give you 1 or maybe 2 days to attempt to get tickets for.
Now if you're lucky enough to be able to find an open day to apply for, I recommend opening a couple tabs, one translated and the other left in Japanese. I find translating the application page normally causes an error (Maybe that's just me).
Once again, if you were lucky enough to get tickets, its time to get there. For me, I always have a rental car by this point, but you could take public transport. I find for most things outside of the downtown area (Tokyo, Yokohama and etc) its just easier and more fun to have a rental car. Plus once you're done with your tour you can head over to Nismo Omori (weekend only) and Daikoku PA, which both require a car
On this visit, I had warned our group how fast things were going to go. Once the garage door went up I was gone. I hung a right and headed right towards the racecar section and didn't really see them again till it was time to go. Now if you're really into the Datsun history and want to take a look through the OEM, factory fresh cars, head straight in and walk the first three rows. The progression of the Prince into the Skyline is cool and to see a couple perfect Hako's is awesome, same for the Silvia and a couple other interesting cars. Everything has a storyboard to explain what the car is and etc.
For me, its about the racecars. I circled back later after I shot the racecars to shoot some of those OEM GTRs, Silvias and etc but since I headed over, I took advantage while everyone else was listening the history of Datsun to get a bunch of clean shots without anyone walking through or being in the background of my pics.
The only thing that was missing was they used to do a vehicle startup. Where they would have a special car pulled out, start the motor and talk about the car. It was an interesting part of the tour but they didn't do it this time or maybe its something they just don't do anymore.
The Nissan Heritage Museum Tour is a great way to spend a few hours and see a ton of great Datsun/Nissan cars. The cars and the staff are incredible and it's an extremely entertaining time.
Next up - The Nismo Omori Factory, nothing beats a cool shop space and this place is the coolest.
Also if you want Nismo parts/merch this is your place
You know you're in the right place when you pull up and are greeted by a bunch of beautiful Nismo cars and if you're lucky a handful of customers GTRs waiting to be worked on. These get pulled in quickly and don't spend much time outside.
We got lucky when we arrived, a meet at Daikoku had just had the cops push them all out. So we had a bunch of cool cars parked and coming through.
Nismo Omori is one of those Japanese experience places, the showroom is small'ish with 3 main cars on display, on this visit they had a Formula E and a couple OEM Nismo cars in the showroom space. They have a huge viewing window into the shop space which is super cool to see what they are working on and of course, anything Nismo that you'd want to buy they seem to have in stock.
I've been lucky enough to see a 400r and a couple rare R34 spec cars in their shop space. Sometimes I forget that I'm at an actual working shop space since everything is so clean and looks more like the car on display at Nissan Heritage Museum.
It'll sound funny and no, I didn't take any pictures but make sure and check out the bathroom while you're here. The walls are decorated with engine internals and it does look pretty cool.
When I'm in Yokohama this is one of the places I'll always stop at, its close to other car stops, like ASM Autobacs, UpGarage and Daikoku Pa. All of which make for a solid day of car fun.
These are my two favorite sports to visit where I'm able to see some of the coolest cars Nissan has made/competed with. Just make sure and do your pre-planning. I know that Omori will be closed at the beginning of 2025 for renovations and Heritage you have to apply for tickets ahead of time. Starting a couple years back Omori had also changed its visiting hours to weekend only, so make sure and confirm that they will be open when you want to visit.
Now these aren't the only spots to see cool Nissan cars. They have the Nissan Headquarters in Yokohama that normally has 5-6 cars on display, but mostly new cars. There is also the Nissan Crossing in downtown Tokyo, again with just a couple cars.
Check out my full walkthrough for each.. Enjoy!!
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