Pathfinder for us from USA

The new Nissan Pathfinder unveiled at this year's Detroit auto show and due in Australia early next year could come from the USA.

Nissan's production interests were largely unaffected by the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan last year, apart from some parts supplier issues and effect on X-TRAIL supply. However, late last year when floods affected north of Bangkok Thailand, increased supply of the Nissan Navara was arranged from Spain to accommodate the impact. Up until then, the majority of Nissan Australia's volume from Thailand was for the Navara.

"For this year it should be clear," said Nissan Australia spokesman Jeffrey Fisher when asked whether supply issues would affect the brand's quest to become number one importer here.

"We were moving a lot of Navara [models] from Thailand at the time, so we were caught out by that but we were easily able to re-source it from Spain, so we had that as a back-up.

"Nissan is very fortunate in that we've got multiple global manufacturing centres to fall back on," he said, including the UK (for our Dualis), USA and Indonesia (for Micra). Toyota's production concerns are largely based in Japan and Honda relies heavily on its Thailand facility.

Mr Fisher confirmed our next Pathfinder, due second-half of 2013, could be sourced from the USA. "We're definitely looking at that as an option," he said. Same goes for the new Nissan Altima, which is expected for Australian showrooms late next year. The mid-size sedan is scheduled for production in the US but Nissan intends adding another source.

"Our production and sourcing network is much more spread globally than some of our competitors," he suggested.

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