Nissan Shipping U.S.-Built Minivans to China
Nissan Motor Co., Japan’s second-largest automaker, began shipping Quest minivans produced in Mississippi to China, the first such vehicles exported from the U.S. by an Asian automaker to the world’s fastest-growing market.
An initial shipment of about 200 Quests built at Nissan’s Canton, Miss., plant was loaded Friday onto a China-bound freighter at the Port of Los Angeles, spokesman Ernesto Del Aguila said.
Tokyo-based Nissan plans to send as many as 4,000 Quests to China in the business year that ends March 31, he said. That would be among the largest numbers of U.S.-produced vehicles shipped to China.
Nissan and carmakers such as General Motors Corp., Toyota Motor Corp. and Ford Motor Co. have spent billions of dollars to add or expand factories in China during the last five years.
Auto sales increased 9.4% in the first half, according to the China Assn. of Automobile Manufacturers, after gains of 15% last year and 76% in 2003.
Low labor costs, relatively cheap retail prices and tax and tariff issues have led most automakers to produce locally in China.
Nissan’s export plan “is worth watching in the sense that potentially it could be the start of something big,” said Donald Straszheim, a former Merrill Lynch & Co. chief economist who now heads Los Angeles-based research firm Straszheim Global Advisors. “That said, I would be very surprised if exports of U.S.-built autos to China ever amounted to anything too significant.”
GM’s luxury Cadillac models are among the few U.S.-produced vehicles currently shipped to China. Honda Motor Co. in 1998 and 1999 exported “a very small number” of Marysville, Ohio-built Accord sedans to China, and the cars weren’t sold to consumers, company spokesman Yuzuru Matsuno said.
Nissan will begin selling the Quests in September. The minivan’s engine is modified to meet Chinese emission rules, the suspension was tuned to handle China’s rougher terrain and the models also have standard rear fog lamps, Nissan said. Pricing hasn’t been set yet, Del Aguila said.
Nissan’s U.S. sales have risen steadily during the last two years, increasing 24% in 2004 and 15% so far this year, fueled by a series of successful new model releases.
Quest, however, hasn’t sold as well as expected. Nissan initially planned to sell 60,000 Quests a year in the U.S. when the model was released in 2003. It sold 46,430 in the U.S. last year, and sales through June of this year fell 12% to 22,673.
Nissan’s U.S. operations are based in Gardena. The company’s U.S.-traded shares were unchanged at $20.81 on Friday. They have fallen 5.1% this year.
