Contraction Coming in the Van Market?

No, not the minivan market. We’ve covered that at length. We’re talking van vans — the slow-moving ones that used to terrorize your author as a child. (Turns out that media-driven social panic was mostly nothing, but I digress…)

Word comes to us that, as automakers recede from the commercial van segment, Nissan might be prepared to do the same.

Per Automotive News, sources who claim knowledge of Nissan’s product plans say the aging NV family of commercial vans is due for the chopping block. Built in the U.S. and based on the Titan, the NV Cargo and Passenger vans appeared for the 2012 model year.

Positioned against the top-selling Ford Transit and challenged by alternatives from Mercedes-Benz and Ram (rebadged Fiats developed jointly with PSA Group, to be exact), the NV has a smaller sibling in the Mexican-built NV200. A variant of that model once carried a Chevy bowtie badge, but no more.

Nissan, which was on the ropes even before the coronavirus pandemic reared its head, plans to move forward with a reduced global lineup. Under its new four-year plan, both models and factories will be pared down, along with production volume. The only products to survive will be those that make sense in a given region.

The days of trying to compete in every segment, at the risk of business bloat and unnecessary overhead, are over. While Nissan did not confirm the potentially looming discontinuation, it did tell Autoblog it was “considering a number of opportunities to streamline the product portfolio” in order to realize efficiencies.

NV full-size van sales actually rose over the course of the model’s lifespan, hitting just above 20,000 units in the U.S. last year, though this volume pales in comparison to the Transit’s popularity. Ford sold nearly 154,000 of the versatile rigs in 2019, with General Motors’s positively ancient Chevrolet Express pulling in more than 77,000 customers. Ram’s Promaster saw more than 56,000 takers.

[Image: Nissan]