Tag Archives | Nissan

What Happened to the Tundra?

By on June 6, 2011 in Editorials

By Chris Haak

Way back in the 2007 model year, you may recall that things looked quite different in the auto industry. Neither GM nor Chrysler had declared bankruptcy; GM was still the world’s largest automaker. Ford had just bet the company that its latest restructuring would fix their problem once and for all. Toyota was on a seemingly unstoppable roll, with month upon month of increasing sales (often at a clip of 10 percent over the year-earlier period).

There were certainly storm clouds on the horizon for the Detroit Three. GM, Ford, and Chrysler were losing money, the credit markets were drying up, and there was a major threat brewing against the last bastion of US automakers: the full-size pickup.

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New York’s New Taxi Will Be a Nissan Van

By on May 4, 2011 in News

By Chris Haak

Decades ago, when you travelled to the Big Apple, there was but one kind of taxi: the ubiquitous Checker.  Beloved by many because of their spacious interior and incredible durability – not to mention timeless shape – the last Checker retired from active taxi duty in 1999.  It was not unusual to see a Checker’s odometer tallying a million miles before the car was finally retired.  In more recent years, the taxi of choice in New York was the Ford Crown Victoria.  Though it’s still a big car, the Crown Vic was never as great of a taxi as the Checker; it had far less interior room than its outward size would suggest, and it’s just not as graceful to enter and exit as the big Checker was.

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New York 2011: Nissan Reveals 2012 Versa

By on April 20, 2011 in News

By Chris Haak

Nissan’s Versa, which competes against subcompacts such as the Honda Fit and Toyota Yaris, has the value proposition of being the “big small car,” and indeed, the current Versa is a relative value.  It’s a good car that accomplishes the rare feat of “small on the outside, big on the inside,” but is saddled with oddball looks, as if its designers spent a little too much time with its French cousins from Renault.

Today in New York, the Japanese automaker showed its next-generation Versa (also known as Tiida in other parts of the world).  It’s clear that the 2012 Versa’s designers tried very hard to give the car a more fluid, dynamic, upscale shape.  It’s not clear, however, that they completely succeeded.

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Review: 2011 Nissan Juke SL AWD

By on March 20, 2011 in Reviews

By Kevin Miller

At first blush, Nissan may seem like a typical Japanese automaker. Looking from a different angle, though, shows Nissan offering vehicles in a few segments where no other automakers do. Nissan’s Cube redefined the JDM box in North America. The Versa proved to be a spacious and versatile car, decidedly affordable with a value-leader version offered at $9999.

Nissan’s latest left-field entry is the Juke. Dubbed a “Bold Urban Sport Cross” by Nissan’s marketing group, the Juke is the size of a compact hatchback, but rides on a taller suspension than other compacts, to give it a compact-meets-SUV flavor. SUV attributes include wheelarch cladding, all-wheel drive. Compact attributes include a minuscule trunk inside of the hatchback, incredibly tight turning radius which makes the Juke incredibly easy to park. Continue Reading →

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Japan’s Earthquake and Tsunami Halt Auto Production

By on March 14, 2011 in News

Information on what you can do to help can be found at the bottom of the article.

By Chris Haak

It goes without saying that in the devastating earthquake and follow-up tsunami that hit Japan last Friday, the largest cost will be a human one.  Thousands of people have been killed, and the death toll is going to continue to rise in the coming days and weeks as cleanup and recovery operations progress.

There’s also an economic cost to the disaster.  Early estimates are that reconstruction costs might exceed $35 billion USD, to say nothing of the diversion of resources away from attempting to grow Japan’s economy and overcome a 20-year period of stagnant economic growth and immense public debt.  The auto industry in Japan is not immune from these forces, and in fact has already been significantly impacted by the disaster, with more to come.

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2010 US Auto Sales May Indicate Brighter 2011

By on January 5, 2011 in Editorials, News

By Chris Haak

The December 2010 US auto sales are in the books, and it was a pretty solid month overall, unless you work for Toyota.  Overall, industry light-vehicle sales were up 11.1 percent on the month, and coincidentally, 11.1 percent on the year.  Forget all of the talk over the past 12 months about SAAR (seasonally adjusted selling rate); with a full year now under our belts, we know exactly how many cars and trucks were sold.  The answer?  During 2010, dealers recorded 11,590,274 new-vehicle sales, compared to 10,431,510 new-vehicle sales during all of 2009.

As with any marathon like a year of car sales represents, there were some winners and losers, although there were certainly more winners in 2010 than there were in 2009.  Last year, you may recall, only Hyundai and Subaru posted year-over-year sales gains.  For 2010, the tables were turned, and all but Toyota and Suzuki lost share, although Suzuki’s loss was far more severe than Toyota’s was.  Toyota’s 2010 sales declined by 0.4 percent, and Suzuki’s slid by 38.0 percent.

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First Drive: 2011 Nissan Leaf SL

By on December 21, 2010 in Features

By Roger Boylan

GM’s short-lived electric car of the ‘90s, the EV1, was available in limited quantities as a lease-only proposition, so the 2011 Nissan Leaf is the first all-electric car the general public can buy. Its price is reasonable for such cutting-edge technology: around $25K, once Uncle Sam’s tax credit of $7500 is applied.  Is it worth it? It certainly has great promise, and it’s a well-conceived little car. I spent a short while behind the wheel of Leaf a couple of days ago–a very short while, unfortunately, the actual drive time  having been eaten into by a high-energy sales presentation from Nissan’s own Seinfeld-wannabe; I didn’t catch his name, and I ducked his pitch. I was there merely as an Autosavant, desirous of completing my trifecta of electric-car tests (read about the Toyota PHV Prius here and the Chevrolet Volt here).

The Leaf is powered by a lithium-ion battery pack of the type familiar to me from the Prius Plug-In and Volt. Lithium-ion batteries offer quicker acceleration and a longer range than your common or garden nickel-metal hydride battery, but unfortunately, they’re still at a fairly rudimentary stage of development, with limited range and—in the Leaf—a dead weight of about 500 lbs. We were shown cutouts and diagrams by the comedian. But I was reassured to note that, notwithstanding the futuristic technology, the Leaf is a fairly normal-looking car, a four-door hatchback with that cloyingly cute Pokémon face so typical of small Japanese cars.

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Volt, LEAF Powertrains Among Ward’s 2011 “10 Best Engines”

By on December 8, 2010 in News

By Charles Krome

The Chevrolet Volt and Nissan LEAF continue to rack up the awards, with the propulsion systems from both being named to the annual “10 Best Engines” list put together by Ward’s.

Per the editor’s, the former’s “‘Voltec’ propulsion system is brilliant—a technological masterpiece,” with editor-in-chief Drew Winter adding that “General Motors engineers have changed the course of history by creating an electric vehicle with true mass appeal.” But is it really an EV? Well, Ward’s says “Some consider it a glorified hybrid while others just don’t understand it.” Make of that what you will.

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GE Plans to Buy 25,000 Electric Vehicles

By on November 11, 2010 in News

By Chris Haak

Giant industrial conglomerate General Electric has announced plans to purchase 25,000 electric vehicles by 2015 for its fleet.  These purchases represent fully one-half of GE’s corporate fleet, and are an immediate shot in the arm for EV demand in the US.

Though there are certainly environmental benefits to be seen through a large purchase of [tailpipe] emission-free vehicles, the move is not purely altrustic on GE’s part.  The company obviously gets a considerable amount of goodwill from stepping up to the plate and becoming an early adopter of EV technology.

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Some Things I Learned About the Nissan LEAF

By on November 2, 2010 in News

By Charles Krome

I had lunch with Nissan vice president Carlos Tavares yesterday—just me, Tavares and about 100 of my new friends from the American Press Association—and it was quite the ol’ learning experience. Tavares, who heads up Nissan’s business in the Americas, was in town to discuss the automaker’s new “Innovation for All” marketing campaign, but he ended up spending much of his time talking about the Nissan LEAF. It was no surprise, of course, as America’s first “real” electric vehicle designed for the modern-day mainstream consumer is nearing its launch, and to say there’s still some skepticism about its viability is a serious understatement.

So, Tavares spent most of his time presenting counter-arguments to the points people usually use to discount the LEAF’s potential. For example, there’s the fact that while the car itself uses no gasoline and produces no tailpipe emissions, there are still plenty of environmental issues around generating the electricity on which it runs. As some on the green side of things like to point out, “clean coal” is an oxymoron.

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