Nissan to change "vanilla" image

Improving Nissan Australia's "vanilla" image is a key priority for the company's new managing director and CEO Richard Emery.

Emery, who joined Nissan on April 1 from Mercedes-Benz Australia/Pacific where he was sales chief for more than five years, has taken over a company which in the short term has to sort out a surfeit of stock driven by an overly ambitious business plan.

But get past that initial challenge and Emery believes the local division must live up to Nissan's global 'innovation and excitement for everyone' tagline in terms of the cars it sells and the way they are sold if it is to become more successful.

"I have a view right now that Nissan is a vanilla brand," Emery told motoring.com.au.

"I think if we ask people out there 'what is Nissan?' They say 'Navara', they don't say anything about Nissan, they name the products.

"Navara is not vanilla, GT-R is not vanilla, but Nissan is. And so we have to decide what we are going to be in Australia first and then we have to stick to it."

Emery says the proposed rear-wheel drive IDx small car, which could start under $30,000 and be the cheapest in a new-look quartet of sporting Nissans, is the kind of vehicle that could deliver on the global tagline, in the same way the Datsun 1600 offered affordable driving enjoyment 40 years ago.

"If it is designed and structured the way they seem to be thinking then that is probably a product that can relive some of those days and re-establish some of that positioning," Emery said. "I think there is an opportunity."

While the IDx is yet to be confirmed for production, Emery does have a significant amount of new generation metal headed for launch, headed by the Qashqai (nee Dualis), Navara in 2014 and the Murano in 2015. The popular X-TRAIL compact SUV has also just been renewed.

Emery revealed he had already challenged the team at Nissan Australia to think with innovation and excitement about how they would market new models, admitting the day-to-day grind of having to move too much metal over the last 12 months had made them cautious.

"I have used this example in a management meeting; if you are a V8 Supercar driver doing a qualifying lap how do you get peak performance? You are right on the edge of the kerbs, you are on the edge of disaster. So the edge of the disaster is where you get peak performance.

"If you are a car company like Nissan has been for the last year and-a-half you are a metre in from the kerbs because you don't want to muck anything up. I am saying 'have a crack, go to the kerbs I'll protect you'."

Emery also revealed the 'innovation and excitement' credos should extend to the way Nissan related to its customers, its retail strategies and potential packaging of "mobility solutions".

"Innovation doesn't necessarily have to be products it could be the way we sell the cars. It could be the way we go to market," he said. "We are still selling cars the way we have for the last 20 years as an industry and a lot of other retail industries have moved well beyond that.

Emery used the hypothetical example of financially packaging a household with a Leaf electric vehicle and a Pathfinder Hybrid and calling it the 'green garage', describing it as "a very strong message in a particular area".

"Because we have such a broad line-up we can probably do something like that... We have to try innovative ways of going to market, not just innovative cars."

Emery, who is the first Australian to run the local Nissan division since industry legend Leon Daphne retired a decade ago, says he has been given "permission" by global HQ to experiment and change the business model because of the issues of the last 12 months.

"If we keep doing the same things we have been doing, we are not really going to move on. We are big enough to have some experiments. Because we are selling 70,000-75,000 cars a year can I have an experiment with 2000 Jukes? Of course I can."

Emery confirmed he planned to stay at Nissan Australia for at least five years, which is generally two more than expatriate bosses who cycle through Australian automotive outposts. He said the state of the business made the appointment of a local sensible.

"I think Nissan was looking for some long term stability... First was to normalise the business, get it in good shape and therefore allow for growth.

"We are not walking away from opportunities to grow the business, so … they are probably looking at five years saying 'Richard you have two-and-a-half years to get your house in order and in two-and-a-half years you need to start selling more cars'."