Quote:
Originally Posted by JDMDreams
I really wonder what happened to Nissan? Cvt killed them? Like they were killing Acura and Lexus with 350z G35. They had the fx. I wonder why they never put more models out and continued to develop them. All the m and q platform cars were good. I remember the Altima 2.5 was so fast compared to Honda cars of the day. There's used to be Maxima's and Pathfinders everywhere.
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It's always money. They had very few top quality products in the last 20 years and those that were there rarely printed money - the G35 was a winner but it didn't sell in the kind of volumes or prices to fund more development. Same goes for everything they sold - even when the Altima briefly was competitive with the Accord/Camry they weren't selling it at margins that made much money (Nissan didn't have the brand equity of Honda/Toyota so they always sold for less)
In the past year their profit margin has hovered around 1% despite very little R&D spend (warmed over product after warmed over product) while Honda is around 5% and Toyota has gotten as high as 11%. Both Honda and Toyota are spending tonnes of money on R&D even as they make solid profits. Even Mazda manages 3-5% margins despite being tiny and they're investing tonnes into their RWD platform and new engines (Mazda has made a lot of hay selling their top trims heavily)
Nissan is basically the Japanese version of Stellantis (maybe worse). They may have EV know how because they started earlier but I really doubt they have anything today that Honda doesn't have. Their body on frame isn't class competitive either - I don't see Honda taking it and adding it to their lineup in anyway.