Nissan promises to right its wrongs and says the upcoming redesigned Titan pickup will appeal to a wider range of buyers. After struggling for nearly 10 years and capturing a mere 1.5 percent of the full-size pickup market, the logical next step would be abandoning that segment, right? Instead, the automaker says it will come back smarter, offering a wider range of models and powertrains when the next-generation Titan arrives in 2014. And, it expects sales to increase, too.
Why is Nissan so confident after a dismal decade? The Japanese manufacturer is tight-lipped, but upcoming Ford COO Mark Fields and Chevrolet’s marketing folks provide a little insight about the overall pickup market. Specifically, there’s a huge pent-up demand for new pickups and there is a significant number of buyers out there who are not loyal to a particular brand. Apparently, those are at least two of the reasons for Nissan’s optimism.
The Titan has been a sales slug. It started strong, there was optimistic talk about 100,000-plus annual sales, but it never happened.
The Titan arrived in the 2003 calendar year as a 2004 model. The best sales year was 2005 when nearly 87,000 pickups were sold. Last year a few units shy of 22,000 were picked up by buyers. Compare that with Ford: 584,917 F-Series were sold in 2011. The Chevrolet Silverado captured 415,130 buyers; Ram, 244,763; GMC Sierra, 149,170; and Toyota Tundra, 82,908. In all, about 1.5 million full-size pickups were sold in 2011.
Four reasons come to mind for the Titan’s sales debacle:
- Limited model line: The Titan is available with an extended cab or a crew cab, and that’s it.
- Nissan ignored tradesmen: There’s no base model nor 2500 or 3500 models.
- Only one engine is offered: There’s no smaller-displacement V-8 or a V-6 to supplement the standard 5.6-liter V-8.
- Styling: The Titan has been pretty much unchanged since its debut in 2003.
At one point, the redesigned Titan was going to be developed and assembled by Chrysler, using the Ram pickup platform. That truck was slated to go into production this year, but the plan was scuttled a few years ago when Fiat acquired Chrysler, forcing Nissan to redesign the Titan.
Nissan probably is looking at pretty much the same market data as its competitors. In a telephone call to analysts last week, Fields said there “could be a lot of opportunity out there” for increased pickup truck sales in the next two years. He rattled off some numbers that are astounding.
Fields said that 53 percent of the pickup population—that’s 16 million trucks—is more than 10 years old. Breaking that down further, 28.5 percent of the pickup population, 8.3 million pickups, are 15 or more years old. Here’s another startling fact: About 4 million pickups, 12.9 percent of the overall pickup population, are 20 years old or older and still on the road. The numbers were plotted by Ford’s economics team and R.L. Polk, according to a Ford spokesman. The average truck on the road today is about 10 years old.
- Comparison Test: 2007 Chevy Silverado vs. Dodge Ram, Ford F-150, Nissan Titan, Toyota Tundra
- Comparison Test: 2012 Chevrolet Silverado 2500 LTZ 4WD Crew Cab vs. 2012 Ford F-250 Super Duty King Ranch 4×4 Crew Cab, 2012 Ram 2500 Laramie Longhorn 4×4 Mega Cab
- Short Take Road Test: 2011 Ford F-150 XLT SuperCrew 4×4 5.0 V8
“There’s a lot of pent up demand out there,” Fields said. Of course, there is a big opportunity for all players.
Additionally, in conversations with Chevrolet’s marketing team two months ago, I was told that about 15 to 17 percent of full-size pickup buyers shop around—they have no loyalties to Ford, Chevy, etc. As mentioned earlier, last year about 1.5 million full-size pickups were sold. That means about 220,000 to 255,000 buyers are probably shopping price and features—an opportunity for Nissan. Those shoppers don’t give a hoot about the brand.
So why is Nissan spending tens of millions on the next generation Titan? Simply, it’s all about the numbers.
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