Nissan has admitted that its line-up of vehicles swelled far too much in recent years, leaving it with an aging family of models that simply weren’t competitive.
It is no secret that the Japanese car manufacturer has been battling through a difficult period, especially in Europe where sales dropped from 566,191 in 2017 down to just 394,091 in 2019. In a recent interview with Car Magazine, Nissan’s global COO Ashwani Gupta explained what went wrong for the company.
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“We went too fast to expand in the world, anticipating that global auto markets would grow and that our sales performance would be excellent. Both those things didn’t happen,” Gupta said.
“When rubber touches the ground you smell the smoke. As a result, we were landed with aged vehicles, a huge line-up which we could not maintain. It’s all based on investment: if you don’t have the revenue you can’t have [new] cars. It’s a vicious cycle. So what Nissan said is: let’s rationalize.”
To spark life back into the automaker, Gupta is leading an ambitious turnaround plan that will see costs slashed, various plants in Spain and Indonesia shut, and the entire Datsun range discontinued in Russia. Nissan will instead work more closely with Renault, while also focusing its energy on its most important markets, namely the U.S., China, and Japan.
“In the US, our market share is more than seven per cent, in Japan and China it’s more than 10 per cent. Profit? Yes in China and Japan, and in the US we think we have a potential to make [it].”
In Europe, Nissan will focus on its crossovers: the Qashqai, Juke and X-Trail, while also looking to introduce new technologies, including electrification as well as autonomous and connected systems.
