Prince Motor Company
The Prince Motor Company was a Japanese automobile manufacturer from 1952 until its merger with Nissan in 1966. Prince began as the Tachikawa Aircraft Company, a manufacturer of various airplanes for the Japanese Army in WWII, e.g., the Ki-36, Ki-55 and Ki-74. Tachikawa Aircraft Company was dissolved after the war and the company took the name Fuji Precision Industries. It diversified into automobiles, producing an electric car, the Tama, in 1946. The company changed its name to Prince in 1952 to honor Prince Akihito's formal investiture as Crown Prince. In 1954 they changed their name back to Fuji Precision Industries, and in 1961 changed the name back again to Prince Motor Company.
Prince had success building premium automobiles. Among its most famous car lines were the Skyline and Gloria, both of which were absorbed into the Nissan range after their 1966 merger; however, they also built the 15-passenger Homy which was eventually shared with the Nissan Caravan and the Nissan Laurel, a four-door sedan platform mate with the Skyline, on which Prince had begun development before the merger but was introduced after the merger in 1968. Prince had also begun development on a small car to compete with the Toyota Corolla and Nissan Sunny, but after the merger, the car was introduced as the Nissan Cherry using front wheel drive. The Prince organization remained in existence inside Nissan, though the marque disappeared. Since the merger, the Prince name survived as a dealership network in Japan until Nissan consolidated the Prince dealership network into "Nissan Blue Stage" in 1999.
