Nissan no 'basket case'

New Nissan Australia boss Richard Emery has rejected the perception his company is a “basket case” and is confident the over-supply issues he has inherited can be resolved within months.

Emery, who took over as managing director and CEO at Nissan Australia on April 1 after more than five years as sales manager at Mercedes-Benz Australia/Pacific, openly admits the company is over-stocked with Pulsar small cars and the Y62 V8 Patrol because of an overly ambitious 2013 sales plan.

But with other models in the range showing sales promise and the new Qashqai SUV and Navara ute coming this year, he thinks Nissan is in a better situation than it is perceived to be.

“The perception it (Nissan Australia) is a basket case is beyond what the reality is,” Emery told motoring.com.au.

“I would like to think when we enter 2015 we can start truly talking about what we can do to increase our share and things like that. It could turn around really quickly.”

Nissan’s perception issues can be traced as far back as former boss Dan Thompson’s bullish 2009 declaration that the company was aiming for a 10 per cent market share, more than 100,000 sales and top importer status by March 2013.

While Thompson was transferred in early 2012, his successor, fellow American Bill Peffer, continued the business plan. But the ambitious sales targets over-estimated demand and too many examples of the reborn Pulsar and Y62 Patrol were stuffed into the dealer pipeline.

New Nissans registered in 2013 are still making their way out of dealerships now, which helps explain a 34.8 per cent collapse in year-on-year sales to the end of April according to the official VFACTS registration figures.

But Emery says VFACTS doesn’t paint the true picture – just as it was deceptively optimistic last year so it is pessimistic this year.

“You are looking at four months of VFACTS figures in isolation. What I am worried about is what cars we put across the kerb in the first four months of last year and what cars we put across the kerb in the first four months of this year and they are not the numbers you are seeing.

“So all the criticism that has been put at us about counting cars that aren’t really being sold and all that sort of stuff; if you accept that is what has been happening then clearly the numbers last year weren’t real and therefore, conversely, the numbers this year aren’t real either, in terms of what is really happening on the showroom floor.

“So have we put more customers into new Nissan cars in the first three months of this year than is showing in VFACTS? Yes we have. And we are pretty happy with the number we have achieved. It is normalising our business.”

Emery made the point that Nissan remains a major player in Australia despite the official statistics, remaining entrenched in the top 10 overall and among the top few importers.

“Although a lot of people in Australia would say Nissan in Australia is a bit of a mess it is still actually a strong performer, it has just been off the pace versus what people’s expectations were.”

Emery hopes to have the extra stock out of the system no later that August, allowing other new models such as the X-TRAIL and forthcoming Qashqai (which replaces the Dualis) SUVs and Navara light commercial vehicle to lift the company’s performance.

“X-TRAIL is in good shape -- order intake is fantastic and the dealers are very happy with where it is at,” said Emery.

“If we nail Qashqai and we nail Navara and I can see a rosier picture for what we do with Pulsar then it could be as early as next year that we are in pretty good shape.

“We need to be consistent, we need to think long-term and not panic,” he added. “I am prepared to have bad months. If in the end we are in much better shape as a business… I have actually said to my dealers ‘I won’t make my decisions based on the VFACTS results and I won’t be making business decisions based on what other external parties think we are doing or not doing'.”