Nissan Australia model line-up safe

Nissan Australia is adamant that its model line-up will not be affected by cuts within the global product line-up.

Last week, Nissan announced it was cutting 12,500 jobs and 10 per cent of its global range across all brands by 2022: Nissan, Infiniti and Datsun. The move is part of Nissan’s strategic reformation plan that should help the Japanese car-maker to “build an operational base that will ensure consistent and sustainable profitability over the medium term”.

The announcement immediately drove speculation about which models would be given the cut. Many have suggested Nissan would follow in the tyre tracks of both Ford and General Motors in taking the knife to sedans and passenger cars.

Specifically, the US-spec Nissan Maxima, ageing 370Z sports car and Infiniti Q70 luxury car have been three particular passenger models deemed to be under a cloud.

However, Nissan Australia has confirmed there will be no such cuts across the local range. Spokesman Tony Mee said it was “business as usual” for the Australian operation.

“There’s no impact to us, it won’t affect our market,” he told carsales.com.au.

“We don’t know exactly what’s going to happen globally with the change in vehicles. But our line-up has a great history in Australia and there won’t be any affect.”

Nissan’s announcement coincided with the release of its first quarter financial numbers for the fiscal year 2019.

The firm generated an operating profit of 1.6 billion yen on net revenues of 2.37 trillion yen, which represents a decrease in the first-quarter net income by 94.5 per cent to 6.4 billion yen compared to the same period last year.

“Profitability was negatively impacted by the decrease in revenues and external factors such as raw material costs, exchange rate fluctuations and investments to meet regulatory standards,” the company explained in a press release.