For a second time in less than 40 years, Nissan could phase out its Datsun brand as a part of its restructuring plan, Bloomberg reports. The automaker was facing strong financial headwinds even before the coronavirus pandemic, ones that worsened immediately following the dramatic ouster of Renault-Nissan president Carlos Ghosn. The cost-cutting efforts are part of a three-year turnaround plan scheduled to be revealed on May 28, along with the company’s financial results.
The plan will reportedly include reductions in marketing and research, and will also phase out the Datsun brand, Bloomberg notes, which itself was reanimated in 2013 as a budget brand for India, Russia and several other developing markets. Instead, the plan will see a greater focus on the Infiniti brand, which had taken some damage over the past several years, including a withdrawal from Europe and a shortage of new models.
The Datsun brand debuted during a very different time for Nissan, which was trying to rapidly expand and occupy many new segments and markets. The marque, on ice since 1986, was brought back with a lineup of small hatches and sedans positioned below Nissan’s more affordable models, specifically to compete with other budget brands like Dacia, Lada and Skoda in a slew of countries where Nissan had a relatively modest presence. With plants in India, Russia and Indonesia, the brand was launched fairly quickly and experienced an early boost in popularity, even from those who were too young to remember the last Datsun vehicles of the 1980s.
The 2013 relaunch of Datsun was very much of product of Ghosn’s expansionist plans at the start of the previous decade, which chased volume and new markets, perhaps at the expense of some other priorities. But it worked for a while during the time in which it was implemented, when inexpensive cars during a slowly moving economic recovery were very much in demand. Datsun experienced solid growth during the first two years of its reboot but was unseen in North America, of course—and thus difficult to get a sense of from here. The volume strategy actually worked, up until it ran out of steam around 2017.
Reports of Datsun’s impending demise have circulated for the past half-year, as Nissan’s finances took a major hit during the summer of 2019, prompting layoffs of 12,500 workers globally and plans to cut 10% of its lineup. But the coronavirus crisis facing automakers has likely hastened plans to phase out the brand.
What part of the current Nissan organization will pick up the mantle of budget brand? That’s likely to be Mitsubishi, in which Nissan took a larger stake a few years ago, effectively bailing it out after Mitsubishi’s latest brush with financial trouble that was spawned by the fuel economy figure mini-crisis in Japan.
This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io
