Looming regulatory changes on pickup truck fuel efficiency and emissions will cause Nissan North America Inc. to throw in the towel on manufacturing its full-sized Titans in 2011.
Nissan -- the first Japanese automaker to attempt full-sized American pickups -- has determined that it no longer makes sense to build its own. In an agreement announced late Monday, the company said it will source the next-generation Titan from Chrysler's Saltillo, Mexico, truck plant, using a design created by Nissan. At the same time, Chrysler will receive a new small-car for the U.S. market built by Nissan in Japan.
The upcoming regulatory changes will require pickup producers to meet a more stringent corporate average fuel economy standard, based on the size and weight of the vehicle, starting in model year 2011. That is something that would be expensive for Nissan, which sells just 60,000 Titans a year.
"We could not have continued to make the Titan," Dominique Thormann, Nissan's senior vice president for administration and finance, said in a phone call to reporters on Monday.
Thormann was upbeat about the truck it will obtain from Chrysler, insisting that it will be a "Nissan-unique" vehicle, with Nissan performance characteristics.
"We're not giving up on the Titan," he said.
Overtaken
But the new CAFE regulations in the face of a shrinking U.S. truck market have clearly thwarted Nissan's ambitious plans. Nissan spent nearly a billion dollars to open a radical new assembly plant in Canton, Miss., to enter the full-sized truck market in 2003 with hopes of selling 100,000 or more Titans annually.
At that time, the U.S. market was selling 2.5 million trucks a year. Today, Thormann noted, the market is 2.1 million.
He said that Nissan's small market share has made it difficult to consider different configurations of the truck to remain competitive. Currently, the Titan comes with only one engine, a 5.6-liter V8, and is only available in two body styles -- a king cab and a crew cab.
New plans
Nissan's strategy for American truck-making is rapidly evolving. The company said last week that it would discontinue building the Quest minivan and Infiniti QX56 in Canton, and begin building light commercial vehicles there instead.
Thormann said that Canton's two other products -- the Titan-based Armada SUV and the Altima sedan -- will not be affected by the decision to outsource the Titan.

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They are outsourcing the truck, but not the SUV? Odd.

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Anyone seen sales numbers on the Titan vs Armada? Maybe they are selling a lot more Armadas than Titans thus the reason for outsourcing the pickup?

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My best guess is that Nissan is notorious for sharing frames rather then building a new frame for each vehicle which is fine for small cars you just bolt on different body panels but when it comes to trucks you limit yourself to configurations and we all know that both the Armada and the Titan share the same frame. Enter Dodge, they have a boat load of frames in which to bolt body panels to thus opening up the Titan to different configurations like the Tundra offers. To me it seems that Chrysler and Nissan have decided it would be better to outsource to companies that already have tooling, engineering and manufacturing then pour out millions or billions to basically reinvent the wheel.

Good points Squid.

Will be interesting to watch and see what kind of different configurations they come up with.

Hate to see the business leave the USA.

re.ac.tor

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That plant down in Jackson is HUGE! You drive by it forever. Seems like they should be making the Dodges instead of the Mexicans.

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