Nissan fightback! New boss promises “bold and brave” future in Australia

The new boss of Nissan in Australia has promised to be bold and brave in the development of a strategy to make the Japanese auto brand a “major player” in the local market.

Andrew Humberstone, whose official title is Nissan Oceania vice-president and managing director, says he has been handed a “white sheet of paper” to plan the future of Nissan in Australia over the next 15 years.

“I am going to be very brave and bold, I am going to look at many, many extreme scenarios and what-if scenarios,” he told media at the recent MY24 Nissan Patrol Warrior launch.

“I think it’s important we really challenge where we are today and say ‘how do we become a significant and major player in this market?’”

Humberstone, who arrived in Australia in April, has set himself a 100-day deadline to develop the “skeleton’ of the long-term strategy.

He will present it to AMIEO (Africa, Middle East, India, Europe and Oceania) region chairman Guillaume Cartier in Melbourne in July.

Withdrawing from Australia does not seem to be one of the options Humberstone will offer his boss.

“We are absolutely fully committed to this market,” he said.

“I think it’s an important message to land with you how important Australia is to our business overall.

“We will be making some significant changes and that’s my expectation. I think the next five years will be very interesting and you will start to see within the next two or three years quite a lot of changes.”

Humberstone declined to delve into specifics, although he did promise to outline the strategy publicly once it is locked away.

“We will look at all scenarios” he promised. “But in essence we need to decide what is the business case that best suits this market and our customers and our dealer partners.”

Humberstone arrives in Australia at a time when Nissan is showing signs of market revival after slumping out of the sales top 10 in 2022 and 2023.

To the end of May 2024, Nissan sales are up 42 per cent year-on-year and the brand sits eighth on the VFACTS sales ladder.

As impressive as that sounds, Nissan’s 20,623 sales are only about one-fifth of the 100,398 sales recorded by market-leader Toyota and roughly half that of second-placed Ford.

Nissan’s slump was due to a number of reasons including COVID limiting supply and an ageing model line-up that was replaced in a rush in late 2022 with the launch of the new-generation X-TRAIL and QASHQAI volume-selling SUVs, the bigger Pathfinder large SUV and the Nissan Z coupe.

Nevertheless, Nissan Australia is understood to have been profitable during COVID thanks to strong demand for models like the Patrol and its local Warrior line.

Humberstone also nominated a broad product line-up, comprehensive 180-plus national dealer network and a captive finance arm as positives for the business.

Overlaying that is the bigger picture of an automotive market in transition from combustion to electrified vehicles, which will be accelerated by the New Vehicle Efficiency Standard CO2-reduction scheme in 2025.

“What we do know is we want to be in Australia and we want to be a major player and therefore the white sheet of paper is the future back strategy that says ‘how do we get there and what should we be doing, what have we done wrong, what are the learnings, what have we done right and how do we move forward’.

“The 100-day paper is going to be the draft skeleton which I share with our CEO… and then the outcome of that will be ‘OK, how do we develop that?’.”

Humberstone is a 30-year automotive industry veteran who was previously Nissan Great Britain managing director and before that head of Nissan independent markets.

Among other positions, he has also worked for Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, in charge of its European, Middle East and Africa region.

He has hit the ground running since his arrival, visiting many Nissan dealers including mystery shopping some, as well as meeting with customers.

“I’ve spent the first 30-odd days really listening… in order to effectively dilute filters within the organisation and get data as quickly as possible myself,” he said.

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