Nissan Shifts Responsibility for U.S. Design to Area Studio
Making an unprecedented move to jump-start its flagging U.S. operation, Nissan Corp. said Monday that it has shifted design responsibility for future American market cars to its studio in La Jolla.
The move makes Nissan the first Japanese car maker to give its U.S. design studio so much autonomy. It also further increases California’s considerable influence in automotive design.
Nissan’s studio, one of more than 20 automotive design houses in the region, already has come up with several new concepts--including a sports car and a sport-utility truck that may soon become production models.
The move “is part of a trend by the Japanese companies to move more and more intellectual content here,” said David Cole, director of the University of Michigan’s Office for the Study of Automotive Transportation. “But none of the others have made the commitment Nissan has. Perhaps that’s because Nissan is under greater pressure.”
Nissan, the No. 3 Japanese car company in the U.S., has watched sales plummet as consumers grew bored with what even Nissan insiders say is a lineup of boring mainstream cars.
Its market share is down 30% in the last year, and fewer than four in every 100 car buyers take home a Nissan these days. Worldwide, the company lost $105 million in the fiscal year ended March 31, down from a $627-million profit the year before.
When it first came to the U.S. with cars such as the two-seat Z sports coupe, Nissan was considered an innovative car company.
“Somewhere over the years we lost that,” said President Yoshikazu Hanawa. “We need to get it back.”
The decision to let U.S. design chief Jerry Hirshberg call the shots is part of an overall revamping of Torrance-based Nissan Motor Corp. USA.
“There’s nothing like a splash of fear to get the blood flowing again in the corporate arteries,” said the outspoken Hirshberg. “We hit the wall, but I’m feeling some doors opening.”
Analyst George Peterson of AutoPacific Inc. in Santa Ana called the move “perfect” and said it will finally give Nissan designs that will appeal to U.S. car buyers.
Hirshberg, a former General Motors Corp. stylist who started the Nissan Design International studio in 1979, has complained that designers in Japan were vetoing his studio’s offerings and forcing bland cars on the U.S. market.
Part of Nissan’s revamping includes the release next year of seven new or substantially revised models, three of which were designed in La Jolla. They include a compact sport-utility and a four-door, five-passenger “crew cab” version of the Frontier pickup. By 2001, Hirshberg said, about 85% of Nissan’s U.S. lineup will have been designed in California.
Hirshberg’s studio also has developed three concept vehicles--a sports car to replace the discontinued Z series, a sport-utility truck and a “reinterpretation” of the sedan with more headroom, more cargo space and easier ingress and egress than many of the sedans marketed today.
He said Monday that Nissan is “very likely” to begin producing at least two of the designs.
Final decisions on which cars to build--and how to engineer them--will remain with Nissan’s corporate officers in Japan, with input from U.S. officials in Torrance. “But more and more,” Hirshberg said, “the engineering and even the manufacture of our designs will be done here.”
Nissan already builds the Altima and Sentra sedans, the Frontier pickup and the Quest in plants in the U.S. and Mexico. The company’s new compact sport-utility vehicle and the redesigned Maxima sedan also will be built in the U.S.
Nissan officials have said that the entire corporation’s future hinges on the success of its U.S. operation. Sales in the United States accounted for 32% of Nissan’s revenue last year. The company needs to bolster that to offset a continuing slump in Asian sales.
But Nissan needs to play a fast-paced game of catch-up. It was caught empty-handed last year when Toyota and Honda brought out compact sport-utility vehicles. Its new generation Frontier pickup--with a slab-sided derivative design penned in Japan and selected over a sportier version proposed by Hirshberg--was introduced without a six-cylinder engine and is languishing in a market that demands both style and speed.
Most of Nissan’s vehicles are clones of the standard Asian import design, says Cole of the University of Michigan. “They haven’t turned anyone on because they have been ‘me too’ in style,” he said. “The same can be said of Toyota and Honda, but they have been successful in building quality reputations for themselves and that keeps their sales going.”
