Despite recent reports, it appears that a small Nissan sports car inspired by the IDx concepts is not on the way, at least not in 2016 as previously expected. Pierre Loing, vice president-product planning for Nissan Americas, said a small, RWD sports car that could compete with the Subaru BRZ and Scion FR-S is currently an enigma for the Japanese automaker.
That’s because the company should develop a new rear-wheel drive platform for the sports car, as its existing ones would be too expensive. Furthermore, the low sales volume of such a model would not justify investing in a new platform.
“It’s not easy to do, if you do something like this and you manage to do a vehicle at a low price, what else would you do on this platform? Because frankly to do a platform for 50,000 or 60,000 units a year – it’s not worth it,” Loing told WardsAuto.
Previous reports based on comments from Nissan executive vice president Andy Palmer suggested the automaker would build a production model based on one of two IDx concepts as soon as 2016. However, Loing is very skeptical about that.
“Will the IDx become something or not is debated, but certainly not by 2016,” the executive said. Nissan’s IDx Freestyle and IDx Nismo concept cars debuted at last year’s Tokyo Auto Show.
By Dan Mihalascu
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