Nissan’s had a rough go of it lately. Former CEO Carlos Ghosn wanted the company to gain market share in America by the end of the 2010s. Nissan achieved that goal, but their incentive-based strategy detonated their profitability. To make matters worse, the Nissan lineup is a bit stale. Infiniti isn’t in good shape either. Unlike Subaru, Nissan has some tough times ahead.
Nissan ended the year with a 7.9% slice of the American market. That’s down substantially from the previous year, when the company managed to capture 8.6% of the pie. Basically, there were only a few bright spots in the Nissan lineup. The recently redesigned Altima held its ground and managed to sell 36 more examples in 2019 compared to the year before, for a total of 209,183 sold. That’s a respectable achievement in a declining segment. Perhaps adding all-wheel drive stemmed the bleeding? Anyway, the other model with an unquestionably positive sales figure was the NV full-size van. It sold 20,022 last year, which represented an 18.46% increase from 2018. Finally, the NV200 – aka NYC’s taxi cab of choice – convinced an additional 140 buyers to take one home last year, for a grand total of 18,768.
The Kicks also performed well, but doesn’t exactly qualify as a “bright spot” because production was likely still ramping up in 2018. That explains the roughly 150% increase from the prior year. Nissan sold 58,193 examples in 2019, which is right in line with what other automakers accomplished with their subcompact crossovers.
Every other Nissan model was down, and most by double digits. For some inexplicable reason, Nissan lumps the compact Rogue and subcompact Rogue Sport (aka Qashqai) together, so its not clear what model under-performed. Regardless, the company sold 350,447 of them last year, which was about 15% less than what they accomplished in 2018. Murano sales declined about 18% to 68,361. It’s an older entry in a segment that has seen new contenders in the last year or so, which likely explains the drop. The Sentra and Versa also experienced double digit drops compared to 2018, but the former is at the tail end of its current iteration and the latter was recently redesigned, so those losses are a bit more acceptable.
Perhaps most apparent is Nissan’s near-complete failure to penetrate the full-size pickup segment. With a 37.5% decline in sales from 2018, the Titan only found 31,514 homes last year. The redesigned Titan barely moved more than 50,000 units per year after its introduction. It’s doubtful we’ll see another generation of the truck.
By contrast, the Frontier is quite popular. Sales were down about 9% but Nissan still managed to sell just over 72,000 of them in 2019. Given the Frontier’s age, that’s an impressive number.
It was a bloodbath at Infiniti. Every single model sold experienced a decline in sales compared to 2018. The only models with single digit decreases were the Infiniti QX60 and QX80. The QX80 held its ground with a less than 1% decrease in sales. Everything else performed poorly. The entire brand is down 21% for 2019.
Nissan fared quite poorly in 2019. It’s tumultuous relationship with Renault likely resulted in FCA ditching the group for PSA. The American market cannot rely on the sales practices of years past, which relied on heavy incentives, substantial fleet sales, and subprime buyers. To his credit newly-appointed CEO Makoto Uchida seems up for the challenge. His plan for turning Nissan USA around is to shoot for 2018’s sales figure by 2023, but without all the profit-destroying practices instituted under Ghosn. Part of that goal relies on shorter product cycles:
“If you go beyond five or six years, that is a little bit aging,” Uchida said. “We need a more rapid cycle. If you look at China and see the local brands, their speed is very, very fast.”
A key component of Nissan’s turnaround will hinge on electric vehicles. The company plans to introduce an electric crossover in 2021. It will debut a new twin-motor, electric all-wheel drive system, dubbed e-4FORCE, which was just introduced at CES. The system is designed to deliver engaging driving dynamics, advanced regenerative braking, and sophisticated all-weather traction. In any event, the new CEO has a lot of work to do.
Related Reading:
CC Editorial: Infiniti – What They’re Doing Right, What They’re Doing Wrong by William Stopford
When I see a Nissan I see a good vehicle with odd styling with questionable quality, being driven by someone with iffy credit. I sure didn’t used to think that, but over the past several years – I do.
They need to change that. I remember Kia and Hyundai struggling with those problems, but coming out of it with fresh impressive rides. I don’t know if Nissan has the ability to pull that off.
I don’t think Nissan can do what Hyundai and Kia have done, simply because the Koreans have only moved up the mountain, starting at the bottom. Nissan, by virtue of dropping from a somewhat well-regarded past, fell off the mountain and is now trying to climb back up. This is more akin to Lincoln or Cadillac, oddly, as a good brand that went bad and is trying to regain market share. We have seen how that has gone for both, with neither really doing gangbuster sales, even with good and fresh product. If nobody shops you, it doesn’t matter what you are selling.
I really don’t know if fresh product will be enough. It will help, but too many people regard Nissan as challenged-credit rides, and unless they stay cheap, like the Koreans did until they became socially acceptable as not-cheap rides, Nissan will not see a bounce up.
Lincoln and Cadillac have the image of old people’s cars, the one good thing about Nissan’s credit challenged stereotype is that isn’t age specific, and western civilization truly is so vain that appearing poor is still better than appearing old.
I’d say Nissan is more comparable to Chevy of the 90s right now.
I am giving this website an exclusive prediction, by the end of the decade Sony (yes the Walkman and PlayStation company) will merge with Nissan and Mitsubishi to create a third Japanese “powerhouse” brand, alongside Toyota and Honda. Sony has all of this driver-assist and driverless tech that it is working on and Nissan has cars to install the tech into.
Sony just released a “concept car” at CES yesterday in corporation with MagnaStyer.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/07/sony-reveals-electric-car-prototype-at-ces-2020.html
I’m old enough to remember when Nissan (Datsun) was the #2 Asian import. That feels like a long time ago now.
Woohoo! NV200 sales are up! I guess all those fleet buyers wanted to snatch up the cheapest van sold in the US before it was yanked from the market for 2020. Look for an increase in Transit Connect and ProMaster City vans for 2020.
And the Frontier? My guess is that 50% of the buyers are fleet owners that want the cheapest pickup they can buy, and the other 50% wanted a Tacoma but couldn’t justify the “Toyota tax”.
Most Nissan dealers that I see have two lots. One for sales and another for all of the Rouges they need to purchase to get allocations for Maxima Platinums and GTR’s. If I was them, I would build a “commercial sales office” on the Rouge storage lot to sell only NV’s, Titans, Frontiers, and Armadas. A lot of construction types that I know wouldn’t want to go to a Nissan dealer to purchase anything because of the current Nissan customer base. Offer them their own playpen with bleach blonde sales reps, TV’s on ESPN and Fox News, free coffee and donuts though and maybe they change their minds?
In some ways the above paragraph sort of endorses the vision of Ford to stop building cars. Even though I don’t 100% agree with that decision either.
You really are not far off the mark, even if you might have been joking.
Here in Central Florida, we have a Ford Truck only dealership (Gator Ford) that has done well. Yes, they focused on fleet, and for a while did even sell Lincolns and cars, but they focused on a niche market and have done very well.
Nissan would do well to have Fleet-focused dealerships catering to the working professions like plumbers, contractors, and the like, selling vans and trucks only. Those folks usually have the finances to buy, the need to replace trucks, and the desire to consolidate the fleet to one OEM for ease of service. The trucks and vans need no replacement versions, so focusing on selling those until they have more money for new product, is not a bad idea.
I wasn’t joking. Glad to hear confirmation that my theory is supported somewhere in the real world.
I didn’t realize there was any evidence of demand for Maximas, current iteration
what country r u in?
USA.
Maxima Platniums sell in the Northeast. Mostly due to their past history. But also because they are usually leased and/or traded in quick enough for the first owner to avoid any CVT issues. I test drove one when they first came out in CT. The dealer actually let me drive one that was already sold despite my initial objections. If I wanted one myself, she wanted to put me on a wait list. The new Camry had a wait list too for the higher trim levels when it debuted.
My town’s Nissan dealership has two lots, though that’s changing as Nissan will be relocating away from the other brands soon. One lot sells Nissan, VW, and Jeeps. The other lot sells RAM and Nissan trucks. Come to think of it, our local a Ford dealer (Ford/Lincoln) is similar. The Toyota store has trucks and cars intermixed.
I’m older than Evan Reisner, I guess, because I remember when Nissan was pretty much the ONLY Asian import, unless you lived in a logging or mining community where Toyota Land Cruisers were used. I think the Cadillac or maybe Buick analogy is a good one; fallen from a high place and struggling to recover … or even to remain. Perhaps we’ll start seeing Renault’s along with Peugeot’s here in the US as part of a desperate FCA and Nissan re-branding strategy.
The problem with Nissan is that the French were involved. They need to get back to the Japanese philosophy of the 90s, where you had a decent value for your money with customer service and a willingness to fix defects without making the customer a paying beta tester.
People are shying away from Nissan because of the reputation of the Jatco CVT as an expensive wear item, the resale value compared to Toyota and Honda, the too long refresh cycle between restylings and the ‘meh’ experience of buying and driving them.
Their offerings don’t generate excitement, they generate regret.
I read Uchida’s interview. I didn’t see him mention improving reliability or having any experience with the US car market.
You put into words a thought that has been going through my head. Is Nissan one more example of a European non-luxury/non-German brand that has failed in the US market? It has been quite awhile since I have thought of Nissan as part of the Toyota/Nissan/Honda trio. That trio has been a duo for a long time. When I would sooner buy a Korean car than a Nissan, there is a problem.
This same thought is what concerns me about FCA’s American business under Fiat-Peugeot ownership. The Germans have been able to stay here (even VW) because their not-always deserved rep for “German engineering” and build quality. French, British, Italian and even Swedish cars have not done well here over the long term. They are no better than the Americans but lack the nostalgic pull that GM Ford and Chrysler get here in the States.
Let’s not forget that the French saved Nissan from likely bankruptcy.
And I don’t think the alliance with Renault is the primary issue, since other than some platform sharing (perfectly adequate ones) Nissan was always the much bigger company in volume. Anyway, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong or inferior with the platforms and other elements shared with Renault.
The overarching problem is that Carlos Ghosn set unrealistic demands to meet market share goals in the US, and they only way to do that was by heavy discounting. So they got there, in terms of share, a year or so ago, but at what price? A huge one.
This is the overwhelming reason Nissan wanted Ghosn out: they see his unrealistic demands as having severely damaged the company.
The last Nissan I rode in – a 2019 Altima rental my son had when a deer smacked his ’14 Accord – felt like an old GM W-body, only with nicer appointments.
For REAL.
If that’s where Nissan’s head is, there’s no hope for them IMO.
I went to get my rental car and instead of a Kia Optima, there sat an Altima. It was new. I wouldn’t take it. The rental manager had to clean up a well-worn 2019 Camry instead.
The Camry was painfully boring to drive, but that was still better than an Altima.
Sorry, but those cars are not worth spending any time in.
My Dad rented a 19 Altima for his visit Christmas week and I drove it a few times, W body is shockingly accurate. Mushy brakes, no steering feel whatsoever, boaty ride ride yet inexplicably jarring and cheap cheap cheap interior. Even had Pontiac red illumination throughout most of the dash!
3800 W bodies at least had pep though
You really wonder how the same company can produce the GTR.
I think one of the problems that Nissan seems to have(at least in the Washington DC/MD/VA area where i live)is image. The lasting impression of Nissan is that they have the reputation of being the vehicle company of last resort. The place you go if you have been rejected for a car loan everywhere else. i think they inherited the “subprime lender” status from Mitsubishi after Mitsu foolishly offered no payments for a year back in the early 2000’s and nearly destroyed themselves.
Status and perception of status are still a strong part of car buying. In the USA buying a car is one of the 2 major purchases that a person can make(a house is the other)
Nobody wants to willingly be seen in a “poor person’s” car.
This thought process is not limited to the USA. Take India’s Tata Nano. This was to be one of the cheapest new cars made and was supposed to have added thousands of new drivers over the life of the car and also helped to lower air pollution as these new drivers would be ditching their fumes belching old motorcycles and scooters.
However they did not sell a lot of them and killed the car off in 2018. Some reason for that was a few caught fire over the course of the first 2 years but the main thing was the stigma of being a poor person car.
I admit that i have that bias when it comes to Nissan also. When I am on the road and a Nissan product is in the next lane, by instinct, I think will my car insurance go up if I get hit by that Nissan driver because they ether have no insurance or next to no insurance?
That (and the transmission issue) meant I never gave Nissan a look when I test drove other cars.
I also think that Nissan knows there customer base and figure why upgrade and make things fresh when these folks only care about getting a new car for the lowest price.
Unfortunately, there’s still too many jalopy-grade Nissans rolling around for the brand’s American perception to improve during the next few years.
Though it’s better here in Europe. Mostly-manual crossovers like the Juke or Qashqai, as well as harder financing, have helped in keeping Nissans desirable.
If jalopy grade examples of a brand rolling around hurt current product line perceptions, Toyota and Honda would be in a lot more trouble than Nissan in the US.
Nissan’s Leaf EV has been doing pretty well, reaching 400K lifetime global sales last March. The 2nd generation is well accepted, but facing fierce competition from Tesla Model 3 worldwide, and Chinese manufacturers in that market. Leaf is pretty boring as EVs go, but I see quite a few around.
They’re well positioned to make that electric crossover a success next year. They’ve already made the big investments in EV that most others are just stepping up to. Of course the whole outfit has to survive and even prosper for their EV business to bloom.