NEW YORK MOTOR SHOW: Nissan confirms new cars

Nissan Australia's top brass have confirmed the company will aggressively swell its product range in the lead-up to the new Altima medium car's launch in the latter part of 2013, with at least four other new models coming in the next 18 months.

The Nissan LEAF electric car is arriving mid 2012, to be followed by the Almera small sedan in August, followed by diesel Dualis later in 2012 and the all-new Nissan Patrol will round out 2012 when it arrives in December.

The reborn Nissan Pulsar is expected to get a lot of bums on seats early in 2013 and the Altima will follow later that year after making its debut as a V8 Supercar to rival Holden and Ford's race cars.

The flurry of new product is critical in Nissan Australia's plan to dethrone Mazda as the country's number one full-line importer by year's end and beat back Hyundai and Volkswagen at the same time.

But Nissan Australia also admits it needs more passenger cars to be competitive. Ian Moreillon, the company's executive general manager of national sales and fleet, pointed out that its record-breaking sales month of March 2012 saw 8317 cars sold, but only 3119 of them were passenger cars -- the rest were commercial vehicles and SUVs.

"We know our passenger range is a little weak today [but] we're going to see some major changes in that in the next 12 to 18 months. That's been a strategic plan of ours," said Moreillon.

"We're certainly on the march. As the product comes in we've got Pulsar from very early 2013, then of course we have a couple of other launches leading up to that, LEAF, which is small volume but certainly very important for us, then Almera. Then we have Patrol late this year."

Nissan Australia's desire to replace Mazda as the king of importers is about credibility and brand value says the Nissan exec: "It's important to be number to number one to give strength to our brand to give strength to our dealer network. The importance of it is really credibility within the marketplace. You will only get it through a balanced portfolio."

Outgoing Nissan Australia CEO, Dan Thompson, put in place the GT2012 strategy which revolved around becoming the country's biggest full line importer by the end of 2012. Moreillon says it still achievable and has the backing of incoming CEO, Bill Peffer.

"We're on track [for GT2012] we believe. It depends on a few things, but our goal is to be that," added Moreillon. "How successful we are versus that, being realistic, depends on competitor activities and what happens there. But yes, that is our objective.

"Bill Peffer, our new CEO, certainly stands by the commitments Dan made for GT2012 and then we'll be reconfirming internally our commitments that we'll be launching for GT2016."

According to Nissan Australia's top brass, the company's rapidly expanding passenger vehicle portfolio will be the lynchpin in its bid for top importer status, and more of the company's new products will be America designs.

"We're going see a lot of change with the Nissan brand in the next two years," explained Moreillon, who confirmed the American-designed Nissan Pathfinder will be the second US vehicle to arrive here after the Altima.

"We've made a decision in Nissan Australia that we want to align our design direction more with the USA than ... Japan and Asia. So yes, we can see more product in the future going down that route of design direction. How many of those [US] products come in the near future is a question that remains unanswered, but Altima is the first, Pathfinder will be the second."

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