CAFE casualty: Nissan to outsource Titan
CAFE casualty: Nissan to outsource Titan
Automotive News | April 15, 2008 - 12:01 am EST
Looming regulatory changes on pickup truck fuel efficiency and emissions will cause Nissan North America Inc. to throw in the towel on manufacturing its full-sized Titans in 2011.
Nissan — the first Japanese automaker to attempt full-sized American pickups — has determined that it no longer makes sense to build its own. In an agreement announced late Monday, the company said it will source the next-generation Titan from Chrysler’s Saltillo, Mexico, truck plant, using a design created by Nissan. At the same time, Chrysler will receive a new small-car for the U.S. market built by Nissan in Japan.
The upcoming regulatory changes will require pickup producers to meet a more stringent corporate average fuel economy standard, based on the size and weight of the vehicle, starting in model year 2011. That is something that would be expensive for Nissan, which sells just 60,000 Titans a year.
"We could not have continued to make the Titan," Dominique Thormann, Nissan’s senior vice president for administration, said in a phone call to reporters today.
Thormann was upbeat about the truck it will obtain from Chrysler, insisting that it will be a "Nissan-unique" vehicle, with Nissan performance characteristics.
"We’re not giving up on the Titan," he said.
Overtaken
But the new CAFE regulations in the face of a shrinking U.S. truck market have clearly thwarted Nissan’s ambitious plans. Nissan spent nearly a billion dollars to open a radical new assembly plant in Canton, Miss., to enter the full-sized truck market in 2003 with hopes of selling 100,000 or more Titans annually.
At that time, the U.S. market was selling 2.5 million trucks a year. Today, Thormann noted, the market is 2.1 million.
He said that Nissan’s small market share has made it difficult to consider different configurations of the truck to remain competitive. Currently, the Titan comes with only one engine, a 5.6-liter V8, and is only available in two body styles — a king cab and a crew cab.
New plans
Nissan’s strategy for American truck-making is rapidly evolving. The company said last week that it would discontinue building the Quest minivan and Infiniti QX56 in Canton, and begin building light commercial vehicles there instead.
Thormann said that Canton’s two other products — the Titan-based Armada SUV and the Altima sedan — will not be affected by the decision to outsource the Titan.
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