Saar: The Kicks will become Nissan India’s first all-new model in over five years.
Nissan kickstarted its Indian innings with its alliance partner Renault in India. While the French carmaker has tasted success with at least two of its products, the Duster and the Kwid, the Japanese automaker has been struggling. Sales for Nissan have been falling year-on-year. Based on the sales data for fiscal year 2017-18 shared by SIAM, Nissan-branded cars comprised of just 23.5 per cent of total sales sales, while the rest were from Datsun.
As far as the Nissan Kicks SUV is concerned, it did pick up traction to come to India. But not so long ago, Nissan announced that the Kicks might be delayed as it was still working on the localisation part. Now though, according to a report by Business Standard, the Japanese carmaker will launch the said SUV in the coming months. But before that happens, its subsidiary Datsun is expected to get a new product for India.
Jerome Saigot, MD, Nissan Motor India, reportedly told the publication:
“We have plans on the Nissan front. It is true that as of today the product line up is a bit old. In few months you will see a new Nissan car on roads.”
-
- Datsun GO Facelift
-
- Datsun GO+ Facelift
He further added that the firm now had a plan and product line-up to support the two brands. For its Datsun brand, which brings in more sales for the Japanese carmaker in India, the number of outlets in the country will be doubled to around 200 in the next 18 months. Predictably, most of those will be placed in tier-II and tier-III cities in India.
What will be the Datsun product that Saigot mentioned? It could be the mid-life update of either the GO hatchback or the GO+ compact MPV, both of which recently went on sale in Indonesia. We could even see Nissan bringing both the refreshed models together.
What's your reaction?
