Nissan's van plans

A key component of the Nissan Power88 business plan is building the company's share of the global market to eight per cent — and commercial vehicles will play an important role in that.

Nissan Australia has been anticipating a full commercial vehicle range to sell in the local market for some length of time, according to the importer's MD, Dan Thompson, so the parent's new-found commitment to vans sounds positive. While Nissan is considered strong in pick-ups locally, it hasn't had a van to offer Aussies since the Urvan in the early 1990s.

"This [business plan] was good news for us;" Thompson told motoring.com.au last week. "Being transparent, we've struggled to secure the right van for this market, over the last couple of years.

"Nissan has made a statement in this plan that they want to be the number one global leader in LCV [light commercial vehicles]."

Thompson takes heart from that, "because [vans are] a natural fit for our strength in commercial, our strength in the network, our strength in fleet."

Without vans to offer in the local market, Nissan is ignoring a slice of the pie that is proving fairly lucrative for newcomer Hyundai, with its iLoad model.

"It just is business that we're giving away today, by not having [vans]," Thompson said.

Nissan has the NV200 van (pictured) already in production, both in Japan and, with joint venture partner Dongfeng, in China. That's a smaller van than the likes of Toyota's HiAce and the iLoad, so it wouldn't be a direct competitor to those two if sold here. At 4.4 metres in length, it fits roughly halfway between the shortest HiAce and Suzuki's APV.

In Japan it's marketed as the NV200 Vanette, reviving the name of the Vanette sold here in the past, slotted into the range below the Urvan. Based on Thompson's subsequent words, the NV200 looks like a non-starter for the local market — in this generation at least.

"There's a whole slew of vans across the globe; obviously it's European and Japanese-centred, with the US just starting to dabble in LCV over the last 12 months. We continue to work that space, but it's going to be a couple of years before we have — in my opinion — the right product there.

"And we've had many opportunities over the past couple of years, to take existing product, and it just hasn't been right. I think the van market here is changing very rapidly, so if we're going to bring a van into this market it needs to be really competitive, given what the Koreans have done... and obviously the strength in the Europeans."

Thompson also put paid to any possibility of Nissan Australia offering a people mover based on a commercial vehicle platform, as Hyundai does with the iLoad-based iMax.

"We've got tremendous strength in SUVs and crossovers, so we're not going to dabble in MPVs," he said.

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