Nissan wants to offer Datsun at $3,000
Nissan chief executive Carlos Ghosn wants to relaunch retro-brand
Datsun with a price tag as low as $3,000 when it hits the road in 2014,
a report said.
Thecompany will target drivers in developing nations -- India,
Indonesia and Russia -- offering the barebones model at prices that put
it well below current Nissan offerings, according to the Wall Street
Journal.
The paper, citing interviews with Ghosn and other executives, said
Nissan is aiming for six Datsun models at between $3,000 and $5,000, a
price that only a handful of Indian- and Chinese-made cars could compete
with.
To cut costs, the company will source parts almost entirely from the
country in which the finished product is to be made and sold.
And the absence of rigorous safety standards that would be applied to
models aimed at the US or European markets will also help keep the price
down, the paper reported.
"If you go to the US, it's not going to end up being $3,000," Ghosn
told the paper in an article published Monday.
The Brazilian-born Ghosn said a future Datsun would be "modern and
fresh" and had to appeal to buyers in developing markets because it
would make "them feel good and is in their budget". He said the new
brand will be one of Nissan's primary "accelerators of growth", in the
campaign to grab eight percent of the world market by 2016, up from six
percent at present.
All of which means boosting sales in emerging economies, which the
company expects will account for three-fifths of all sales five years
from now, compared with 43 percent now.
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