Honda and Nissan reported in merger talks

mtn said:

In reply to NickD :

I have been trying to figure that out. All I can figure is some RWD Infiniti platforms, that are frankly outdated, and trucks, which are also outdated?

Production facilities?

Assuming they pare down the model lineup to less than the collective total lineup is now, then yes, I'd expect them to end up with more production capacity and more engineering capacity per model potentially.  And as much as the Nissan trucks are dated and not big sellers, they're not necessarily bad trucks.  And particularly in the case of the Titan, they're beefier than any truck Honda has built themselves.  I'd personally expect that the Frontier may go away in favor of keeping the Ridgeline, but the Titan would give Honda an opportunity to make some improvements and go after a chunk of Toyota's Tundra sales without having to engineer a body on frame truck from ground 0. 

In reply to rslifkin :

Nissan tried and failed to break into the both the 1/2 ton and 3/4 ton market agaisn't the big 3.

 I've owned both a 1st gen titan halfton and a 2nd gen Titan XD and both were good trucks that nobody knows about.

 The big 3's advantage is the brand loyalty and the multiple drivetrain options to fit nearly any buyer.

 I don't see Honda being silly enough to try it again.

 Up here the Frontier as priced as premium trucks and don't seem to sell well either.

 Perhaps if they cut the pricing and sell those as a budget truck(I think they'd sell like hotcakes deeply discounted)and leave the Ridgeline as the completely different flavour of truck it is that might work better for both.

kevlarcorolla said:

In reply to rslifkin :

Nissan tried and failed to break into the both the 1/2 ton and 3/4 ton market agaisn't the big 3.

 I've owned both a 1st gen titan halfton and a 2nd gen Titan XD and both were good trucks that nobody knows about.

 The big 3's advantage is the brand loyalty and the multiple drivetrain options to fit nearly any buyer.

 I don't see Honda being silly enough to try it again.

 Up here the Frontier as priced as premium trucks and don't seem to sell well either.

 Perhaps if they cut the pricing and sell those as a budget truck(I think they'd sell like hotcakes deeply discounted)and leave the Ridgeline as the completely different flavour of truck it is that might work better for both.

I don't see many Frontiers around, but I do see at least some Titans.  I see more Tacomas and Tundras than either though.  Personally, I don't see a reason why Nissan/Honda couldn't do as well as Toyota in that segment, especially considering Honda seems to do ok at selling Ridgelines. 

rslifkin said:

mtn said:

In reply to NickD :

I have been trying to figure that out. All I can figure is some RWD Infiniti platforms, that are frankly outdated, and trucks, which are also outdated?

Production facilities?

Assuming they pare down the model lineup to less than the collective total lineup is now, then yes, I'd expect them to end up with more production capacity and more engineering capacity per model potentially.  And as much as the Nissan trucks are dated and not big sellers, they're not necessarily bad trucks.  And particularly in the case of the Titan, they're beefier than any truck Honda has built themselves.  I'd personally expect that the Frontier may go away in favor of keeping the Ridgeline, but the Titan would give Honda an opportunity to make some improvements and go after a chunk of Toyota's Tundra sales without having to engineer a body on frame truck from ground 0. 

The Titan bit the dust already. Nissan killed it off at the end of last year, after pretty dismal sales. The best year of sale was 86,945 in the very first year (2009) and they never came close to that ever again. By 2009, they were below 20k a year, and other than a brief blip in '17, '18 and '19, they never broke above 30k since then.

In reply to rslifkin :

For sure,mostly marketing and perception keeping the frontier from being a better seller.

 To sell they need to be much better priced,a hybrid option would certainly help as well.

 The Titan was completely killed off for the Canadian market a couple yrs ago

I had a thought that I would like if it happened... what if Honda made Nissan into something like Scion.
 

Then I realized scion didn't work out for Toyota, why would the same thing work for Honda? I'm just missing Scion. Cheap, plucky, reliable cars. Nothing like it anymore.