Nissan in INDIA since "2006". Review on Nissan Micra

Nissan Motor, Japan's #3 auto manufacturer (after Toyota and justbehind Honda), is enjoying one of the car industry's most dramatic turnarounds in recent memory. Nissan's models include Maxima Sentra, Altima and Infiniti upscale sedans, Frontier pickups, 350Zsports car, Xterra and Pathfinder SUVs.

In 1999 French automaker Renault took a 37% stake in Nissan and installed president and CEOCarlos Ghosn (nicknamed "Le Cost Killer" based on his talent forturning red ink black), who returned the company to profitability.Renault now owns almost 45% of Nissan. Like other automakers, Nissanhit a downturn in sales in 2008 and early 2009, leading the company topost its first loss in a decade.

Nissan motors operation in India is looked after by hoovers.. they take care of the marketing and promotional activities in india and act as liason between nissan motots and its dealers in india.

nissan has only 5 dealers in India, put up in all metros bangalore, delhi, hydrabad, bombay and chennai. till now they have only two models for indian market x-trail(suv) and teana(sedan) both costs around 26 lkhs. launched on 2007. surprisingly till date all the dealers are selling old modeled cars, without bringing in new ones, reason lack of sales. since both vehicles are CBU(completely built unit) which is directly imported from japan, once ordered.

Teana their laxury sedan is a rework of altima which costs 25000$ in us and many people are aware its one of the mid-segment car.. only because its imported , it attracts taxes and custom duties.. which makes heavy on price tag and many feel its not worth. it has v-tec award winning engine with 6 safety airbags, 4-speed automatic transmission and intelligent key which is USP(unique selling proposition/product) of the vehicle according to shawar motives, its dealers in bangalore. moreover it has been positioned as chaffer driven car with an milage of not more than 6 kmp/ltre in city conditions, ground clearence is only 144mm which is very low for indian roads, , to get it increased by 40mm you have to pay 25k more..the differennce between top end and basic model is only 50k.

so far I havnt seen a single advertisement either in t.v nor in papers..look at volks wagon, merk and bmw ads..even when big laxury car makers are bothered about it, and spending huge on building brand image, why not hoovers nissan.

all dealers are surviving on x-trail sales and services, on an average they sell 12 x-trails a month across india. recent news is nissan has stock of 70+ teana cars in bombay port which has to be sold by all dealers , to bring in new model of teana in to india.even though they bought in promotional offers like low EMI, 1 year worth of fuel free(if u run on average 50 km ina day. etc.). nothing has worked out.. so far all dealers have suceeded in selling only 9 teanas since jan 2009.

the partenership production plant of nissan, renault and mahindra is yet to get started in chennai, where all together will be working on low cost car, and mid-segment cars to compete in indian market...

hope hoovers nissan learns lesson, and invest in brand building activities... and not let downnissan fans in india