As Nissan Holds the Line on Spending, U.S. Sales Hit a Five-year Low

It was an all-around bad year for Nissan, both globally and in the United States. Turmoil and triage was the order of the day, as the automaker was rocked by the arrest and ouster of its former chairman, an escape artist known as Carlos Ghosn, as well as bad blood and intrigue among members of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance.

Cooling auto sales in most developed markets further hurt the brand’s profitability, even as the automaker strove to reverse its incentive-fueled market share push in favor of a sustainable path forward. That path is proving rocky, despite Nissan’s willingness to stay the course.

The brand’s 2019 U.S. sales are horrendous.

Horrendous, but expected. As the automaker seeks to firm up its financial footing via reduced incentive spending and fleet sales ( reduced expenditures on almost everything are the norm now), Nissan Group volume fell 29.5 percent in December, year over year. Through all of 2019, the automaker’s sales declined 9.9 percent.

Regardless of brand, December was not a month to remember at the automaker. Sales of Nissan-brand vehicles fell 28.4 percent last month, with the Infiniti badge dropping 37.8 percent. Through all twelve months of last year, Nissan declined 8.7 percent, with Infiniti faring far worse with a 21.1 percent drop.

It’s no wonder the automaker announced a brief January furlough of its U.S. employees, with reports claiming the company ordered an immediate cancellation of non-essential travel and expenditures.

The Nissan division’s 1,227,973 U.S. sales last year ranks lower than any of the previous five years. 2017 was the brand’s high water mark in the country. Infiniti moved 117,708 vehicles — just a handful of units ahead of its 2014 tally, and well behind its annual volume from 2003 to 2007.

At the same time, Nissan went on a product tear in 2019, introducing a refreshed (and pared-down) line of Titan and Titan XD pickups, a new Sentra compact, and a new Versa subcompact, now sans hatchback variant. The Sentra line was simplified for 2020, offered with a single engine and transmission choice. Like the new Altima that bowed for 2019, the latest Nissan passenger cars wear a strikingly similar corporate face.

With fewer build configurations but greater content on hand, Nissan hopes the new vehicles attract a stable flow of retail buyers. Before, you were just as likely to see a Nissan car parked in a rental lot as you were in a driveway.

So, were there any winners in the Nissan stable? A few. The Altima, which donned an optional 2.0-liter turbo four-cylinder and all-wheel drive for 2019, bested its 2018 standing by 47 vehicles. The cheap and cheerful front-drive Kicks that bowed in June 2018 obviously topped last year’s full-year tally, though recent months saw the subcompact CUV fall behind on a year-over-year basis. December’s Kicks sales showed a 27.7 percent decline.

The midsize Pathfinder and full-size Armada maintained a steady flow of customers last year, sinking only 2.8 and 1.9 percent, respectively. Good news for two high-margin vehicles. The same can’t be said for the popular compact Rogue, which declined 15 percent in 2019.

In the hard-done-by Infiniti stable, only the top-flight QX80 came close to breaking even, sinking just 0.5 percent for the year. The brand’s recently revamped QX50 compact crossover remains a cautionary tale, showing that a newly improved vehicle in a hot segment is not a guarantee of success. The QX50 dropped more than 45 percent in December, with its full-year sales falling 26.7 percent.

New Year’s probably elicited a few mumbles of “Thank God that’s over” from Nissan execs.

[Images: Nissan]