If it's not ready to go yet, it soon will be.
Nissan just announced that it will be investing approximately $119MM in a vehicle plant in South Africa with the intent being to have it produce versions of the Navara's (Frontier here in the US) replacement and capable of rolling some 100,000 of these units off the line annually by 2016. Given that the Frontier's best year of sales here in the US only once reached that 100,000 mark this seems like an awfully high production figure for South Africa or even Africa as a whole.
Might Nissan be looking to EXPORT these SA made vehicles to the rest of the world? I'm not knowledgeable enough about exchange rates to say that it makes fiscal sense but I know that Nissan and other Japanese manufacturers are moving their production facilities rapidly away from Japan where exchange rates have made producing virtually any vehicle for export a money losing proposition.
My only question regarding this article is that it refers to the Frontier/Navara's replacement as a 1-Ton truck. The Frontier is usually referred to as a mid-size truck and certainly not a 1-Ton truck. So could they be referring to the Titan's replacement instead and offering a full size truck in Africa and around the rest of the world? I have my doubts as full-size trucks are not nearly in demand elsewhere as they are in North America. I think here we are merely seeing different definitions of what a "one ton" truck is in South Africa and what it is referred to here.
Regardless, if they want the facility to be able to produce 100,000 of these trucks by 2016 and are announcing an official investment of this size, they must be closing in on a final model in the near future.
Nissan investing $1B Rand in South Africa truck plant for Frontier replacement...
No comments:
Post a Comment