- Nissan will close its Civac plant in Mexico in 2027, according to a new report.
- It will move Navara and Latin Frontier truck production to another Mexican site.
- Civac’s trained workforce and infrastructure could be enticing to Chinese brands.
Nissan is struggling with a perfect storm of existing money problems and the effects of President Trump’s tariffs, and one casualty is something the automaker owes a big chunk of its past success to. The Japanese brand is reportedly closing its Civac plant in Mexico, the first plant it established outside of its home country almost 60 years ago.
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The Civac site in Jiutepec currently builds the Navara pickup and a Frontier truck for Latin America, but production of both will be switched to the company’s Aguascalientes plant, also in Mexico. Civac will close before March 2027, according to Auto News, which says the plant is on track this year to build just 57,000 vehicles. That’s a fifth of the number it churned out less than a decade ago. Nissan has yet to officially confirm the closure.
Production Reshuffles and Future Cutbacks
Moving the trucks to Aguascalientes becomes possible because Nissan is canning the Versa and will likely axe a joint venture with Mercedes that currently relies on the plant. Production of the Infiniti QX50 and QX55 ends this year, and the related Mercedes GLB gets the chop, along with the Nissan-Benz joint venture, early next year.
Nissan is desperate to cut costs, having watched sales plummet and losses stack up, and Trump’s 30 percent tariffs on goods imported to America from Mexico mean building cars south of the US border no longer makes sense. Civac isn’t the only site on the chopping block, however. Nissan plans to close six other plants by 2027 around the world, including its historic Oppama plant in Japan, which opened in 1961. The automaker’s US plants will remain operational.
According to a report from Auto News, the situation is a delicate one for Nissan because a fifth of its North American sales come from Mexico, and laying off thousands of workers isn’t exactly going to do Nissan‘s local arm image any favors. But those workers at the underused and outdated Civac site might not be out of work for long.
A Chinese brand looking for a foothold in North America could be tempted by the prospect of tapping into a trained workforce and the cost-saving benefits of the plant’s existing infrastructure.
Searching for Allies in a Shifting Industry
In addition to cutting costs by closing plants, Nissan is still looking for an ally following the failure of merger talks with Honda, which allegedly broke down because Honda was looking at it more as a takeover. But it seems the two companies haven’t completely cut ties. The pair will reportedly work on co-developing software that could appear in both brands’ cars by the end of the decade.
