I love cars and so a part of me wants every brand to thrive if only so they last long enough to produce some kind of extremely niche product that appeals only to the people who make and/or read this website. Call it the “Pontiac G8 ST Effect.” I’m still sore about Steve Rattner killing Pontiac before we got our neo-El Camino.
High on the list of brands I’m worried about is Nissan. The company is in poor shape and its survival is not guaranteed. There’s a bright spot, however, in that I think the brand is starting to recognize that it’s hosed and is starting to make the right moves to avert disaster.
Is this a hopeful edition of The Morning Dump? Sure, let’s do it. If Nissan can turn it around so can Volvo. The automaker got caught flat-footed by EV market disruptions but still managed to beat profit forecasts. Stellantis is rumored to be fleeing to Mexico with its Ram 1500, though the company insists it’s just preparing for when it runs out of production space in the United States. That’s 18 different kinds of wishful thinking right there.
And, finally, the Department of Energy thinks it’ll be able to rush a lot of money out the door for EV plant conversion… just in case.
Nissan Realizes It Can’t Celebrity Itself To Success
I distinctly remember having a conversation in early March about my daughter’s birthday party. There were rumors of COVID-19 popping up in our community and we wondered if getting a bunch of kids and grandparents in the same room might, in fact, be a bad idea. We ended up cancelling the party.
Around this time Nissan launched an ad with Brie Larson called “Compromise” which is a pro-feminist message about, well, not compromising. This was to sell Nissan Sentras because those, too, were not compromises. Predictably, there was a modest online backlash to the perceived wokeness of the ad and, it seems, Nissan has entirely memory-holed the event by removing all of its press releases and YouTube videos of the ad. Thankfully, a copy of it is still on Facebook and I’ve embedded the video below.
While I’m generally sympathetic to the message, it’s clunky as hell. I have no issue with wokeness and often find people complaining about it to be telling on themselves but, yeah, this is truly terrible. It’s preachy, didactic, and all in the service of making people money. I think the best word to describe it is: cringe. It’s extreme cringe.
I’d actually forgotten about this whole timeline because a few days after this ad was released the entire world shut down and I was too busy worrying about keeping my daughter from seeing the biohazard-suited EMTs taking my dying neighbor out of her apartment to have opinions on Brie Larson.
The whole debacle is indicative of the journey Nissan has been on since 2018, when CEO Carlos Ghosn was arrested in Japan for alleged corporate malfeasance. Since then the company has been lost, trying to divorce itself from Renault while also failing to attract new customers. In the United States, market share has dropped by a third since 2018 and nearly 40% of dealers have reported being unprofitable. I’ve argued that Nissan and Honda should merge.
Nissan had a goal of ending the fiscal year 2024 (which ends in March 2025) with a 6.2% market share. They’ll be lucky to get 5.6%.
To solve a problem you first must acknowledge it and, to its credit, Nissan’s new head of marketing Vinay Shahani seems to understand the issues. He did an interview with Automotive News where he was as frank as you’ll see a marketing exec get about what’s wrong (it helped that Shahani has been at Lexus so it’s not his fault):
Shahani’s strategy to flip old perceptions and draw new buyers targets the rational and emotional impulses in car buying.
Nissan’s new marketing steers away from celebrity-powered advertising. New commercials emphasize vehicle features, technology and the dealership experience.
“The car has to be the star,” Shahani said. “I want to make sure people see all the innovation we have to offer.”
Nissan’s “6 under $30K” campaign highlights the brand’s value-priced sedans and crossovers and is tuned to these times of high interest rates.
“Affordable pricing is more important than ever before,” Shahani said. “Third-party data show a 70 percent drop in new vehicle [listings] priced under $30,000 since 2019.”
So no more Brie Larson, I guess? Focusing on affordability is a great message. But more than messaging is needed. What Nissan probably should do is cut its dealerships like Buick has, but that costs money and Nissan doesn’t have enough money to do that right now.
If there’s any silver lining here it’s that the new product looks much improved. The new Nissan Murano, in particular, could be a winner. Nissan also needs hybrids and needs to figure out some way to get people to care about the Nissan Ariya, but there seems to be some sort of plan to build better cars. [Ed Note: I myself am rather excited to drive the new Kicks, which looks awesome for its price. One thing about Nissan is that it does have a number of sub-$30,000 offerings, which I think is great. -DT].
Volvo Isn’t In Quite As Terrible Shape
Volvo was going to be the next great EV automaker and had a plan to quickly ditch its gas-burning cars in an effort to address climate change (and also increase the company’s value). It turns out that this was the wrong plan, so Volvo is having to quickly readjust.
The slightly good news is that the company’s operating profits in Q3 hit $550 million, up from what the market expected. Will that hold? Volvo is being cautious.
Volvo Cars said it now expects its retail sales to rise by 7-8% this year, down from a forecast in July of 12-15% growth, anticipating no growth in the fourth quarter.
“There’s no doubt that the sector’s getting tougher … We’re starting to see a slowdown in consumer sentiment, driven partly by the high inflation,” CEO Jim Rowan told Reuters.
“A lot of people are taking car loans out in order to pay for their new vehicles, and high inflation obviously affects that.”
The company is in the middle of a product refresh and the new stuff looks good, even if it’s not entirely ready for prime time yet.
Possible Ram Production In Mexico Is Just A ‘Relief Valve’ Says Stellantis Exec
The United Auto Workers union and Stellantis are in a standoff over the future. The UAW is threatening to strike over production commitments while Stellantis is making noises about shifting production to Mexico. What should we call this standoff where both parties have something to lose? A Saltillo Standoff? I’ll keep workshopping it.
Right now Ram 1500s are produced in the UAW-held plant in Sterling Heights, Michigan, but it’s become clear that Stellantis is expanding in its Saltillo, Mexico facility to support more truck production. What’s going on here?
Chrysler brand CEO Christine Fuell told the Detroit Free Press that it’s not a big deal:
Asked why that extra capacity wasn’t added in the U.S., and if the Mexico expansion was an effort to slash spending following a new agreement with the UAW, Feuell said it was not a cost-cutting move.
“The plant in Saltillo does a really good job managing the complexity, and they’re already building pickup trucks down there,” she said.
The future home of the Ram 1500 truck, which is currently built at Sterling Heights assembly near Detroit, is under question given the Mexico expansion.
Sure.
DOE Trying To Push Out EV Conversion Bucks For… No Reason
One of President Biden’s big agendas was to upgrade the nation’s green energy infrastructure in order to counter the threat from China and climate change. One piece of that initiative that’s key is the passing out of grants to convert plants to produce EVs and EV-related parts.
For no reason at all the Biden administration is trying to get those grants out as fast as a government agency can according to Reuters:
U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said on Tuesday the department is working “as fast as we can” to finalize $1.7 billion in grants to fund the conversion of plants to build electric vehicles and components.
“We are working as fast as we can to finalize as much as we can — to get the commitments in contract with all of those who have been selected,” Granholm said in an interview on the sidelines of a Reuters Next conference. “We have a few months to make sure that we’re doing that.”
What could possibly happen in the next few months that would endanger EV grants? Don’t we all agree that global warming is real and a real threat?
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
I don’t wanna hate on Brie Larson too much, so here’s Brie Larson doing “Black Sheep” in Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World. It’s good! She’s talented! She doesn’t make me want to buy a Nissan but that’s not entirely her fault!
The Big Question
Let’s remember some great Nissans. What’s your favorite Nissan of all time?
The one-two punch of the 300 ZX and Maxima 4DSC that matriculated in the US in the 1989 model year. At that time you could also get the Pulsar iteration with the swappable hatches and the last RWD-based small Japanese sports coupe on the market, the 240SX, and within the production runs of the 300ZX and Maxima the Sentra was heavily upgraded to the first SE-R and the Pulsar became the final NX, which had to have been a blast with the SE-R’s engine pulling a tidy and T-topped hatch body. The Infiniti Q45 was a sportier alternative to the LS400, and not only was the J30 style-forward in a way you can’t imagine Nissan being now and other Japanese maker simply weren’t at the time (better Mazdas and the SC300/400 and Toyota Soarer excluded) but ported that style down to their tweener-sized Altima.
It was a time when Nissan surpassed the classic days of the 510 and the Fairladies (roadster and coupe), and nobody then would have imagined the depths to which Ghosn would drag Nissan within two decades. Now we can only hope for a ReNissance, and soon.
Well my AU s14 200sx is high on my list. I really should get it back on a race track.
My ’24 rz34 Z on the other hand is a future classic and I just love how completely impractical and stupid it is.
Now just give me a idx and will be happy.
Matt, I get the feeling that both the Nissan and Volvo dumps are both based on brand performance in North America only.
With all due respect to North America…it might be the centre of attention (with a very short attention span) but it is not the only fart in the jar when it comes to the automotive industry.
Context is everything. And if The Autopian wants to claim to be all things to all automobiles around the world and goes to the actual effort to use writers and contributors from around the world (something you should be proud of) then I humbly suggest you might consider establishing regional context in articles like these.
Are Nissan and Volvo really in trouble or are they just in trouble in North America?
My 240 Z excluding the rust. Too much rust always too much rust, it never sleeps
Back in the mid ‘aughts I bought a ’93 Sentra SE-R as a commuter. I was driving about 100 miles round trip 2-3 times per week for an MBA program in a neighboring city.
That little beast was the perfect weapon for dicing through traffic and making the commute in the shortest possible time while being effectively invisible to the popo. It was a 10+ year old, refrigerator white Sentra! Unless you were a serious car nerd it didn’t attract any attention at all. Fantastic little car.
Maybe wasn’t the best performance vehicle but at the time I loved the 300zx twin turbo from ~1994-1995. Very good looking car and a more affordable alternative to the admittedly better Toyota Supra turbo.
Not counting unobtanium R32 GTRs, I really loved the S14 240SX, especially after it got the slight face lift to get more aggressive. Wanted one so bad when I was 14.