The Russian government offered foreign automakers a deal which would be very costly to refuse: Invest heavily into the Russian auto industry, and Mother Russia will let you import parts and components at negligible or zero duty rates. Present your plans no later than July 1. Miss the deadline, and you may as well kiss the Russian auto market good-bye. Ti ponemaesh? Read More >
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Category: Nissan
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Nissan ReviewsThe Nissan name was first used in 1933, but the company's history goes back much further. Originally known as Kwaishinsha Motorcar Works, the company produced its first automobile, the DAT, in 1914. DAT later became Datsun (son of DAT) in 1931 and Datsuns went on to become the first mass-produced vehicles in Japan. Americans got their first look at the Datsun in 1958 - the 1200 Sedan. The Datsun 240Z was released as a 1970 model and it became the best selling sports car in the world, selling 500,000 units in less than 10 years. |
According to lore, Germany’s autobahn is teeming with S-Class, Porsches, and the occasional Veyron mixed in. Not so, says Germany’s Über-DMV, the Kraftfahrtbundesamt, in an article about the 50 top selling cars in Germany of 2010. “Upper class and sports cars are not in the Top 50,” say Germany’s keepers of car data. The truth is in the following table. Read More >
Fresh indications that the Japanese auto industry is getting back on is feet faster than thought. Honda and Toyota were – in numbers of cars not produced – hardest hit by the ripple-effect of the March 11 tsunami. Both originally thought they would not be back to normal before year’s end. Today, The Nikkei [sub] writes that Honda “will likely have its domestic production nearly back to normal in July, sooner than expected, as autoparts manufacturers quickly get output back on track.” Yesterday, Toyota had confirmed, that the company will be back to 90 percent in June in Japan. Nissan is also near normal and wants to increase production capacity from September. Read More >
Analyst forecasts for Maywere perhaps a little bearish on Ford and a little too bullish on GM, as the two remaining American automakers saw their volumes drop by 3% and 1% respectively (year-over-year) last month. Pickups seem to have been the highest hurt by high gas prices, as GM’s full-sizers dropped 14%, while Ford’s F-Series dropped 15% despite a 55% mix of Ecoboost V6-powered F-150s. But the real losers in May’s downturn were probably the Japanese automakers, whose numbers are just starting to come in, while the biggest winners appear to be the luxury brands, with Porsche up 50% and Maserati up 36%. Check back often as we update our developing table of US auto sales in May.
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Mark Modica, a former Saturn dealer GM bondholder, has leveraged his financial loss at the hands of the government bailout into a blogging position at the National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative nonprofit that “promotes ethics in public life through research, investigation, education and legal action.” At the NLPC, Modica focuses on what he believes to be corruption surrounding the auto bailout, and has written a series of anti-GM posts that make TTAC look like a Detroit hometown newspaper (TTAC “bias police,” take note). Most recently, Modica has caught the attention of the auto media, including Automobile Magazine and Jalopnik, with a series of posts accusing Chevy dealers of “scamming” taxpayers by claiming the Volt’s $7,500 tax credit and then selling Volts as used cars. TTAC welcomes anyone seeking to cast more light on the bailout, but unfortunately, Modica’s attacks are too focused on making GM look bad and not focused enough on providing relevant information to the American people. Let’s take a look and see why…
Newsom writes:
Sajeev,
I am a newbie here so I am not sure that I am posing the question in the correct cyber-manner but here goes: I purchased a 2000 Nissan Frontier 4-door truck new in August of 1999. It has 112K miles and I have just replaced the clutch: it was the training vehicle for my teenage daughter. I have a son who is 13 who will also learn to drive on this vehicle, then it will be put to pasture.
When I took the truck to my mechanic to get the new clutch I told him that I smelled burning coolant when I got out of the truck. He did a pressure test and said it came from the radiator, which he replaced.
I still smell it however and I need help. There is no puddle of coolant under the truck after it has been parked. I replace about 1 quart of coolant about every two months or so but it is not disappearing rapidly. I have been resisting using the words h*** g****t for fear that he will recommend replacing them to the tune of big $$$. The smell is strongest under the hood. I don’t smell it near the tail pipe.
Please help. We cannot live without a truck in the family.
When Nissan introduced a six-speed manual transmission for its Sentra SE-R, Chiat did a really cute ad campaign called Master Of The Sixth Speed to trumpet the fact. For many years, a “6” on the gearshift was the sign of a serious performance car (or the serious diesel pickup which towed it.) The original mass-market six-speeders were all serious business: the Viper, the autocross-conquering L98 Corvette, and, of course, the Porsche 964. The Viper would have been fine with four forward gears, as would the ‘Vette, but the relatively peaky 3.6 non-Varioram Porker did benefit from having the shorter spaces between ratios.
Now that base Hyundai Accents and Kia Rios offer their owners a chance to become “masters of the sixth speed”, however, Porsche has decided to up the ante.
Sales of new cars, trucks and buses in Japan dropped 37.8 percent from a year earlier in May, data released by the Japan Automobile Dealers Association show. It could have been worse. Read More >
Bloomberg reports:
Renault SA Chief Executive Officer Carlos Ghosn agreed to make development of upscale cars for French factories a “priority” as the government steps up its influence in the wake of a botched spy investigation.
Renault, based in Boulogne-Billancourt near Paris, named Carlos Tavares as Ghosn’s deputy late yesterday. The French state, the carmaker’s biggest shareholder with a 15 percent stake, made support for the appointment conditional on strategy changes, including taking a stronger lead in its alliance with Nissan Motor Co., people familiar with the situation said.
“If it’s this hard just to get your man in place, it suggests we’ll see more, rather than less, government influence going forward,” London-based Credit Suisse analyst Erich Hauser said. France is a “relatively small shareholder with a disproportionate say over strategy, which has to be a concern for other investors.”
…Ghosn said he intends to be “more present in France from now on,” in an interview published today in French daily Le Parisien and confirmed by Renault.
In the face of such (continued) humiliation at the hands of a minority government partner, one has to admit that America’s auto bailout has been an relatively hands-off affair. Context is important after all (although to be perfectly fair, Renault did embarrass the French government with that “spy scandal”). Besides, it sounds like the brave French pols are simply out to avenge the sad death of the Vel Satis, so hey, at least the French might get the epically weird luxury sedan to end all epically weird luxury sedans out of the deal.
With new compact and subcompact models from Ford and GM enjoying respectable sales, the mainstream media has been indulging in some “feel-good” headlines, like the New York Times’s Detroit’s Rebound Is Built on Smaller Cars, or CBS’s more equivocal Can small cars rebound U.S. auto industry? It’s an understandable instinct, as the media has long battered Detroit’s inability to build competitive compact and subcompact cars, and in the post-bailout atmosphere of redemption, these headlines definitely help reassure Americans about the value of their “investment.” Unfortunately (if unsurprisingly), however, these pieces gloss over the full truth of the situation. Yes, Ford and GM are enjoying improved sales success with small cars. The “U.S. auto industry,” on the other hand, isn’t actually getting all that much out of the situation, beyond some fluffily positive press. Here’s why:
Hit by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, exports of Japanese motor vehicles plummeted 67.8 percent from a year earlier in April.This according to data released today by the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association. The quake hit all companies, although not equally hard … Read More >
On June 29, Nissan will hold its annual stockholders meeting. Usually, there is a party after the meeting where stockholders and media are being fed a light meal. This time, they better bring a sandwich. Read More >
After the zusammenhang of the bailout era, green car ads have juiced up the competitive battles in automotive marketing, with Chevy attacking “range anxiety,” Hyundai wrangling the asterisks and now, Nissan busting the Volt’s chops for enjoying the odd sip of gasoline. After leading off its Leaf marketing effort with a saccharine ad featuring a polar bear driven by global warming from his arctic home, Nissan is getting back on track by bashing its highest-profile competitor… and given that the EV market is still dependent on early-adopters in search of EV purity, the attack is a fairly shrewd one. Eventually the market will be less hung up on the novelty of pure-electric cars and will look at overall efficiency and capability. For the time being, however, Nissan’s got to make the most of its unmatched gamble on the pure electric car. Watch the ad after the jump
Today, Japanese automakers announced domestic and global production numbers for April. April was the first month to take the full brunt of the March 11 tsunami. For the first time, it is possible to get a clear picture of car-nage 2.0, and the carnage is gruesome. Most of Japan’s auto industry had been down for the first half of April, and came only tentatively back in the second half. At home, all major Japanese automakers were hit hard in April. Overseas production was impacted to varying degrees. On a global basis, the Japanese auto industry lost more than 600,000 units in April, or 35.7 percent of its global production in April 2010. Gory details after the jump … Read More >
If it were up to the candidates for president on the Republican side, we would be driving foreign cars; they would have let the auto industry in America go down the tubes,
These were the words of Democratic National Committee Chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) at a breakfast put on by the Christian Acienec Monitor. But, as TheHill‘s Michael O’Brien reports, Ms Wasserman Shultz owns a 2010 Infiniti FX35 that is built by Nissan in Tochigi, Japan. And, adds O’Brien, “The car appears to be hers, since its license plate includes her initials” (it is, see picture above). The congresswoman’s response (through a spokesperson):
They can try to distract from the issue if they want. But if Republican opposition researchers are snooping around garages, they should know that if Republicans — who said that we should let the U.S. auto industry go bankrupt — had their way, they wouldn’t find a single American made car anywhere.
*Sigh*
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