A couple of weeks back, we told you about the rumors regarding Nissan's plans to revive its Datsun brand for emerging markets. Today, Renault-Nissan Alliance CEO Carlos Ghosn made it official during a visit to Indonesia where he met with the country's president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
While addressing the media, Ghosn announced the return of the Datsun brand, which will become Nissan's third global brand after Nissan and Infiniti, while also revealing the firm's new logo.
"Datsun represents 80 years of accumulated Japanese carmaking expertise and is a important part of Nissan's DNA," the automaker said in a statement.
The Datsun moniker was first used in Japan in 1931 with Nissan making the decision to change the name in 1981, though the process took a few years to complete.
Ghosn said that Datsun vehicles will initially go on sale in India, Indonesia, and Russia starting from 2014.
"It's a green car, affordable car, small displacement, high local content," Ghosn said of the Datsun, according to Reuters. "It's going to be a generous car," he added.
During his visit to Indonesia, Ghosn announced measures to strengthen its production base and sales presence in the country by increasing capacity to 250,000 units annually by 2014, with the workforce expanding to 3,300. In addition, the firm's sales outlets are planned to increase to 150 by 2015. To do so, the company will invest 33 billion yen (US$396 million or €303 million).
"Nissan is bringing new jobs and new vehicles to Indonesia," said Ghosn. "We are going to expand our production capability and offer a new and exciting product line here."
13 Comments:
Old name, unreliable image... for the new market.
Makes me sad to see that this is the future of Datsun. I was hoping for someting better for the brand.
its better to restart an old name than to create a new one especially when it comes to city cars, there might be old datsun owners who might want to get a new car, plus, less effort for advertising..
How much is this going to cost to transition? I mean there's a helluva lot involved here. Who is going to pay these costs. Oh, I forgot, the cost will be passed-on to the consumers!
Why are people commenting so dumb seriously ? :S
Let me make sense of it now for all of them. Nissan is still staying nissan even in india and wherever. There is going to be another brand called datsun which sells low cost cars for some markets! A bit like toyota and scion. There is no transition or anything
The article fails to mention the cars will only be in India, Indonesia, and Russia. Datsun's have always had a cult like following, this is a bad move as they will be churning out small cheap cars for these markets. Here's an idea...make good cars, and people will buy them. It's not that complicated.
We have read the bloody article! This only marginalizes the Datsun name, complicates, adds cost, adds confusion. I swear, Ghosn is now in the senility phase of his his life.
It's probably likely that these Datsuns are going to be rebodied Dacias.....
Given India and Indonesia are being targeted, this could have progressive implications for the constantly delayed launch of the RHD Dacia range.
Time for Toyota GT86 rival!
Have you heard about the Japanese airliner where the engine blew-up on. Apparently it was raining Datsun-Cogs.
I like the logo
I'd rather drive a Datsun GT-R :)
The Datsun moniker had brand cache in it's past iteration...and in it's planned revival, it is undeserving for it's historic emblem to be slapped on cheap, low tier cars for emerging markets.
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