Nissan to Build Sales Network to Get Rid of British Importer

Nissan Motor Co. of Japan today invited car dealers to join a new company-run sales network to oust the British importer that has sold Nissan cars in Britain for more than two decades.

The move is likely to further fuel a bitter dispute sparked last month when the Japanese company said it would drop a sales agreement with Nissan UK by the end of this year.

The British company called the contract cancellation invalid and has begun legal proceedings.

“Nissan Motor Co. plans to establish its own dealer network in the U.K., to be operational from early 1992. We would like to extend a welcome to dealers . . . to join Nissan’s team for the 1990s,” the company said in full-page newspaper ads.

Nissan cars have been imported for the last 21 years by Nissan UK, a private company controlled by a reclusive 78-year-old millionaire, Octav Botnar. In the 1960s, Nissan relied on Botnar to enter the intricate and segmented British car market.

It now has a sizable market niche with annual sales of 100,000 cars and its own plant in the northern English city of Sunderland. But in 1990, while total British new vehicle registrations fell 12.7%, Nissan’s sales dropped 22.8%, including a dramatic 49% fall in December.

“We totally lost confidence in them, that’s why we canceled the contract,” a spokeswoman for Nissan Motor in London said. She said Nissan UK did not order on time, did not take its deliveries on time and failed to pay on time.