Feast-and-Famine: Nissan has many new models now, but keeping momentum could be tough

After taking over Nissan Motor Corp. in 1999, CEO Carlos Ghosn pushed designers and product planners to quickly bring out new and redesigned Nissan and Infiniti vehicles. They did, and the new products helped revive the company. But to sustain that momentum, Nissan wants to spread out future changes to its lineup. The automaker's redesigned products currently are arriving in clusters, leaving dealers waiting for up to a year at a time for the next group of fresh vehicles.

Smoothing it out could take 10 years, executives say - a long transition for an industry that lives and dies on fresh products.

Fixing the problem will mean speeding up the schedule for some models while shortening the cycle for others, says Dominique Thormann, senior vice president for administration and finance at Nissan North America Inc.

"Teams are working on a 'levelization,' " Thormann says. "When the Renault-Nissan global alliance started, the pipeline was empty. We created new products - but they all aged at the same time."

Tom Lane, Nissan's Japan-based corporate vice president for global product planning, says the automaker wants to end up with a steady flow of three new or redesigned Nissan products a year, along with one or two new or redesigned Infiniti products every year.

Nissan dealers are now enjoying a feast of new products. The company is ramping up both a new-generation Sentra and Altima, models that account for three-fourths of the brand's annual car sales. Also arriving in the coming weeks is Nissan's first hybrid vehicle, a version of the Altima, followed by the company's first Altima coupe next spring. A freshened Titan full-sized pickup is due at the same time.

The vehicles all follow the summer release of the all-new Versa sedan and coupe.

But before this wave, the last new Nissan model introduction was the redesigned Xterra SUV, in the fall of 2005. For the first 11 months of this year, Nissan Division car sales declined 4.5 percent vs. the year-ago period, while truck sales fell 5.4 percent.

The Titan looks particularly vulnerable for Nissan, underscoring the need to keep products fresh. The Titan is not scheduled for a full redesign until 2010. But in the coming months, Nissan dealers will face strong competition from a redesigned Toyota Tundra. GM's redesigned pickups are also reaching the market.

The ensuing crossfire could hit the Titan, which will sell fewer than 75,000 units this year.

Sources on the project say the Titan in the spring will get a new front end and side flares to alter its styling. The pickup also will get a longer-wheelbase, extended-cab version.

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