Huge American pick-up trucks are not well suited to Australian roads and the local socio-political environment, believes Nissan Australia CEO Adam Paterson.
Paterson says Nissan will not follow the growing trend toward importing American utility vehicles for sale in Australia.
Large pick-up trucks are one of the fastest growing vehicle classes in Australia.
RAM sold almost 3,000 pick-ups in the first seven months of this year, outselling all ranges of established brands like Land Rover and Mini.
General Motors has also had success with its Silverado ute, which has recorded more than 1,000 sales.
Its success has prompted heavyweights Toyota and Ford to seek a piece of the action.
Toyota is evaluating the full-size Tundra for local sale, while Ford has already committed to launching the F-Series locally next year.
But Paterson says his brand is “not actively looking into” a local introduction of the Titan pickup for a variety of reasons, including the fact that some are too big to be a practical option for people who frequent malls, hotels, cars multi-story. parks or urban streets.
“There may be an infrastructure challenge for vehicles like that on a large scale in Australia,” he says.
“Will the new ute standard in Australia be what is generally called a full-size American van? No, I still think it’s a niche product.”
Nissan’s Titan is powered by a version of the 298kW 5.6-litre petrol V8 found in the latest all-wheel drive Patrol.
Paterson doesn’t think luxury vans over $150,000 will sell in large numbers in Australia, as the cost of the conversion makes them hard to justify compared to smaller crew cab pickups like the Nissan Navara, Toyota HiLux and the Ford Ranger.
The looming possibility of a vehicle emissions tax or fleet fuel efficiency standards makes it even less likely that Nissan will commit to a big truck.
“Is it going to be a conventional volume truck here any time soon? I don’t think so,” says Paterson.
“Not in the regulatory environment that we’re heading into.
“Do you think in the short term, with the infrastructure challenge that we have and the regulatory environment that we find ourselves in regarding electrification and CO2, that a full-size V8 or V6 pickup is going to be the mass product? ?
“That one denies himself, right?”
The former Nissan Canada exec says Australia’s EV and fuel efficiency targets are more closely aligned with North America than Europe, which could lead to local showrooms featuring more products based on those. USA in the long term.
But for now, the Nissan Titan is off limits to Australian customers, unless they agree to purchase a vehicle through third-party import and conversion businesses.
“We are still focusing on Navara, which is still quite young in terms of our range,” says Paterson.
“We have added the SL Warrior to the Navara range – we are selling all the Warriors we can build at the moment.”
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