Nissan still aiming for top spot

Nissan Australia's departing MD has reiterated his belief the company will win top importer status Down Under.

Speaking at last week's launch of the updated Nissan GT-R uber-car, Thompson said a mix of new models and the sales momentum the company had built with its existing line-up will drive it past Mazda and Hyundai to grab the top full-line importer status as early as the end of the next Japanese financial year (March 2014).

"Can we do it? Absolutely," stated Thompson...

"Compared to this year... we’ve got quite a bit of new product [next year]. [But] We haven’t launched any new product in 2011, so [we grew sales] from 55 [thousand in FY2009] up to 70 [thousand sales in FY 2011] with one new product – Micra... It [growth] will be back-loaded because LEAF, Almera [Micra sedan] and Patrol are not big volume product for us, but it [volume] will come with Pulsar," Thompson explained.

"Obviously, it’s not just looking at who’s sitting above us now and saying we need to make up that gap one unit for one unit, because we’re going to win share from Hyundai [and] we’re going to take share from Mazda -- especially with Pulsar," he stated.

Thompson says the new small car has been a missing ingredient to the manufacturer's mix and sales efforts Down Under. He says Pulsar, due in Australia in the first quarter of 2013, will add "thousands" of sales to Nissan's local tally.

"Easily thousands. We have every intent with Pulsar to be number one in the [small car] segment. I’ll let you guys go back and do the maths..."

According to Thompson the car will also stall the growth of other marques.

"Pulsar goes at the heart of the bread and butter of Hyundai and Mazda. So absolutely at the end of the last quarter for us in FY12 [January-March 2013], we will have an impact on Mazda and Hyundai with Pulsar. Pulsar is not going to drive [growth in] the segment; it’s going to conquest from other brands. 

But Thompson doesn't place the growth all at the wheels of Nissan's new small car.

"We didn’t want to rely solely on new product to drive our growth, so we’ve invested significant time, dollars and resources into the dealer network, into our brand, into expanding existing product.

"When I arrived in 2008, we were selling about 150 Dualis a month -- we’re going to sell a thousand Dualis this month. [With] X-TRAIL we were probably selling 600 a month --we’re going to sell, probably, 1500 X-TRAILs this month. So a lot of this growth was to do more with what we have [here] first: get the dealer network to where it needs to be; get the product positioning, product specification [and] product marketing where it needs to be...

"We firmly believe that resting on a new product is one reason new brands fail, and when we have a look what did Nissan [Australia] do for these 20 years? We launched all kinds of new product but didn’t get any growth...

"Fiscal Year 11 [which closes March 31] will be our best ever result in 20 plus years and best ever sales result as a full importer. December was a record, January was a record, February was a record and March will also be a record.

"In each of those months there has been in excess of seven per cent share.  So we certainly are making good progress in a very, very competitive landscape over the last four years.

"We have always tracked how the top ten brands performed ...[and]... six of the top ten brands have gone backwards quite significantly. It’s only really us, Volkswagen, Hyundai and Mazda that have made any consistent progress," Thompson stated.

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