Nissan is in the middle of restructuring itself.
The aim is to increase profitability.
Datsun most likely will be axed.
Plants manufacturing Datsun vehicles will reduce output drastically.
Nissan is going through a restructuring, in an endeavor to increase its profitability, and one of the results will most likely be the Datsun brand being shut down.
The new plan is called the ‘performance recovery plan’ internally in the organization, and it diverges from the former top dog Carlos Ghosn’s plan to sell more Nissans. Carlos Ghosn is currently embroiled in a scam that accuses him of fraud. The new plan focuses on the profit per product sold rather than sheer numbers.
Nissan has made up sales figures in the US market, for example, by selling a large number of vehicles to fleet operators at massive discounts. It will also kill loss-making variants of products that are otherwise profitable as well.
All markets with factories except China are under the scanner to roll back production. However, there are no plans to shut down plants or withdraw from a market at this point in time. Nissan’s focus will be on the USA and China. The emerging markets will, as a result, suffer the majority of the cutbacks by the brand.
The problem was that Nissan made low-cost cars in markets like Indonesia, India, Russia and South Africa, and then Datsun’s products came along and offered much better value, which ate into sales of Nissan-branded vehicles.
How this restructuring will affect Nissan’s alliance with Renault is unclear so far, but we don’t have long to wait. The final plan will be revealed by the company in a presentation later this month.
This is a very interesting development for the Indian market because Nissan had only recently commented that the Micra in India will not exist in its current, almost European-equivalent form for its next-generation in India. There will certainly be a restructuring of the Indian portfolio, but it will take at least a year for the plan to have any tangible results.
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