It's Official: The Nissan Quest Is Dead, Discontinued, Defunct, Cancelled

“The Nissan Quest has been discontinued for the U.S. marketplace.”

TTAC has been tracking the Nissan Quest’s failure in the U.S. marketplace for some time. Just ahead of Christmas last year, when it appeared as though the Quest was surely dead in the water, Nissan confirmed that there would in fact be a 2017 Quest.

But when tipped off by an industry insider last February, we noticed that Nissan was reporting higher-than-normal Quest sales despite lacking any meaningful inventory. That’s right — the 2017 Nissan Quest was essentially a fleet-only vehicle.

Most of us stopped tracking the story. After all, it’s a minivan, and a long-ignored minivan, in a market where buyers are currently turning away from minivan in droves. TTAC’s Corey Lewis didn’t quit, however. Like a dog with a bone, Corey discovered that the Quest was missing from NissanUSA.com. Under the Minivans & Vans section, there’s no minivan. We asked Nissan, not for the first time, whether the Quest is dead.

The Nissan Quest is dead. Gone. Expired. Terminated.

If you want one, a handful remain on dealer lots. Cars.com’s inventory includes 41 new Nissan Quests, 25 of which are 2016 models; none of which are 2017s.

But more likely than not, you don’t want. The Quest, particularly since IIHS small overlap crash tests revealed frightening results, simply isn’t that appealing in a segment dominated by FCA, Toyota, and Honda. Even in 2012, the fourth-generation Quest’s best year, only 3 percent of the minivans sold in America were Nissans. When overall minivan volume fell 4 percent the next year, Quest sales plunged 30 percent to only 12,874 units.

Nissan has only reported 79,349 Quest sales since the fourth-gen model arrived in 2011. That’s about the number of Grand Caravans Dodge sells every seven months.

Besides the obvious — the Quest’s lack of popularity — we asked Nissan to clarify why the automaker quit America’s minivan game. Other than clarifying that the Quest was definitely discontinued, Nissan declined to comment further.

Nissan won’t be giving up on the van game entirely. Through the first one-third of 2017, 8.5 percent of the commercial vans sold in America were Nissans: 5,990 full-size NVs and 6,192 small NV200s. The NV is a bit player in the full-size commercial van arena; the NV200 is America’s second-best-selling small commercial van.

Timothy Cain is the founder of GoodCarBadCar.net, which obsesses over the free and frequent publication of U.S. and Canadian auto sales figures. Follow on Twitter @timcaincars.