Toyota & Nissan continue to take a BEATING. Whats going to happen with Nissan? Dodge still going to build their next Titan or did that get scrapped? If not when is it due?





http://news.pickuptrucks.com/2009/08...uck-sales.html

 

Interesting... Toyota Tacoma and Ford Ranger are the only ones to sell more units this July compared to a year ago.

I guess the compact truck isn't dead yet.

 

For some reason I hate a Ranger more than any other vehicle I have driven. Being behind the wheel of one is torture. I remember when the Titan was supposed to be the biggest thing since sliced bread. Didn't they buuld a new plant just to make it. Funniest of all, the Tundra seems to be a big looser.

Funny the July sales don't seem as down as the YTD percentages. Maybe the slump is ending.

 

July a year ago was $4 gas but it was still before the Auto market plummeted. I wonder what type of incentives these trucks had a year ago that probably helped pad the 08 sales figures more than otherwise would have been. I recall some sweet deals on trucks.

 

Yeah it is American made and I remember projections of 100,000+ units a year and I think 200,000 for the plant. It never hit it's sales target, I wonder if Nissan ever made money on them.

Toyota was saying Tundra would sell between 200,000 and 300,000 units a year. This year they will be lucky to sell just over 70,000

 

you can buy them with cash 4 clunkers

 

You can also buy fullsizes with C4C. They have different rules when dealing with large trucks.

 

The 20 year old Ford Ranger outsells the Colorado.... thats pretty sad.

 

Yes it is. I'm not fan of either. I expected more out of the Colorado when it first came out.

 

I loved my 2005 Colorado, it is too bad GM gave up on the truck. It they gave it an updated interior in 2007 and a V6 or I6 I think sales would still be strong.

 

Wow...Nissan is pretty much dead in the water with regard to trucks.

 

I'm surprised the Colorado took such a hard hit. I thought everyone was downsizing their truck to a smaller one that got better MPG.

-44%?

 

What's really intresting is that the Dodge Ram continues to outsell all foreign badged large trucks combined... and has the lowest decline in sales of all pickups in the US, including the F series!

That's because the Ranger hasn't had any real investment in over a decade. Ranger had a body restyling in the early 90s. It's gotten by on facelifts and rare interior restylings ever since.

The interior looks like something from early this decade, and the truck still feels like something from the 90s. That's why next to more recent rides, the Ranger feels like torture.

 

This answers my question...

[QUOTE]There's still much haziness around the long-term future of the Nissan Titan since our last update in April during the 2009 New York Auto Show. A senior Nissan official says the Japanese maker is still open to partnering with the post-bankruptcy Chrysler on its next-generation Titan pickup, but is looking at other alternatives if that alliance doesn’t materialize.

Nissan launched its full-size truck to much acclaim, six years ago, but sales have never lived up to expectations, and with the need to update the offering, the company had hoped to reduce development and production costs by partnering with Chrysler on a new version of Titan that would be based upon the American maker’s light-duty Dodge Ram 1500. With sales of just over 10,000 Titans to date in 2009, or off 50%, the program volumes are challenging.

Though that deal appeared to be sealed, everything was put back up in the air by Chrysler’s forced bankruptcy, earlier in the year. The automaker has re-emerged under the control of Italy’s Fiat, but Larry Dominique, Nissan North America’s vice president of product and advanced planning, told TheDetroitBureau there has been no answer from Chrysler yet as to whether it will want to move ahead on the Ram-Titan project.

That appears to reflect what other industry sources have observed, that the Fiat-dominated Chrysler is in the midst of turmoil, as its new Italian masters shake up the organization. A number of Chrysler executives have left the company and others are being repositioned, but for the moment, it’s not completely clear who is in charge of what.

Nissan is hoping to get an indication of Chrysler’s willingness to proceed, but even then, cautioned Dominique, it will need to work back over the details of the program to ensure that it can still prove a successful alternative to building a next-generation Titan in-house.

There are other options, Dominique explained, stressing that the number of potential partners who might be willing to work with Nissan, “has grown exponentially.” On the other hand, only a relative handful of manufacturers actually have experience specifically producing full-size pickups. Besides Chrysler, that includes General Motors, Ford Motor Company and Toyota, and while the executive didn’t specifically refer to them by name, it seems unlikely, he hinted, that any of those would want to partner with Nissan on a product that might give them competition.

If Nissan did go with a partner other than Chrysler, it would look to do more than just buy a replacement for its Titan. “We have our own V-8,” said Dominique, which a partner might want to use in its own products.

Nissan is hoping to get an answer from Chrysler soon, but it is beginning to look at other alternatives, rather than wait.[/QUOTE]
http://news.pickuptrucks.com/2009/08...on-pickup.html

 

I was really interested in a Colorado when it first came out, until I priced it out and realized I for a few thousand more I could get a base/modest full sized truck/suv, which I did get instead.

The 2009 ZQ8 is almost there for me. If it had a 400 hp V8 6 speed manual with 3.73s and the side air bags (the GMC Canyon has them) along with the 3800 lbs of towing it has right now (ZQ8 has reduced ratings) I'd seriously consider one, even with the $30k pricetag. If it had a beefy set of fixed caliper big brakes on it, I'd be all over it.

The 4 speed slushbox with 3.42's just doesn't seem to cut it with the V8. 0-60 in 6.9ish is okay, but we have full sized suv's and trucks faster than that now.

Unfortunately, I won't hold my breath for GM having enough resources at this point in offering it. Too bad.