“Nissan has a long history of creating segments whole cloth and being the first entrant,” Jominy said, citing the Leaf and Xterra off-roader. He said a smaller electric pickup would be a “perfect play” for the brand.
Nissan is near the tail end of a product revival that leans heavily on nostalgia, updating icons such as the Z sports car, Frontier and Pathfinder crossover.
Bringing a small pickup to North America fits nicely with that heritage-focused strategy, said Greg Carrasco, vice president of operations at Oakville Nissan in suburban Toronto.
“Nissan once was a quirky, interesting Japanese car manufacturer that had loyalty because of how many chances they took when it came to design, when it came to performance,” Carrasco said.
But along the way, Nissan forgot who it was, Carrasco said. “That temporary amnesia is kind of curing itself.”
A new pickup could also help Nissan jump-start its stalled momentum in that high-volume, high-margin space.
Nissan’s Titan is dead last in its category, eking out a 1.5 percent share of the 1,161,563 full-size pickups sold this year through June. “It is very hard, I think, for a Japanese company to really do extremely well against the domestics,” Wheeler acknowledged.
