
In another rebuke of former CEO Carlos Ghosn’s legacy, Nissan announced it is ending production of Datsun vehicles, a nameplate revived as a low-cost brand in 2014.
The Chennai, India-based plant that manufactured the Datsun Redi-GO five-door subcompact ended assembly in March. The facility is operated as a joint venture by Nissan and its French alliance partner Renault. It was the brand’s last facility, as manufacturing at its Indonesia and Russia factories ended in 2020.
A tenuous 23-year-old alliance
The move comes as Nissan executives have been slowly unwinding the company Ghosn built following his arrest by the Japanese government in 2019.
The former CEO gained notoriety for having revived Nissan with the help of French automaker Renault’s equity stake. More than two decades later, Ghosn was seeking to roll the alliance between the two automakers, which included Mitsubishi Motors by then, into a single automaker.

That never happened. He was arrested by the Japanese government and ousted by powerful Nissan insiders who were incensed at the Alliance’s lopsided structure and wanted more independence from Renault, not less.
Nissan sends billions of euros in dividends to Renault each year, as Renault owns 1.83 billion shares, or 43%, of Nissan, a stake worth €7.1 billion, or more than $7.6 billion. In contrast, Nissan owns 15% of Renault yet lacks any voting rights, even though the French government owns 15% of Renault and enjoys double voting rights.
A slowly loosening legacy
Then, last week, reports surfaced that Renault Group is contemplating selling a portion of its stake in Nissan. While it could ease longstanding tensions with its Japanese alliance partner, although Renault wouldn’t be unravelling the Alliance completely, just using the share sale to help fund electric vehicle development.

It’s possible that Nissan could buy the shares in question, given that it has ¥2 trillion, or $15.6 billion, in cash and equivalents on hand. It could happen, given that Nissan’s Chief Operating Officer Ashwani Gupta is traveling to Paris this week for discussions with Renault Chief Executive Officer Luca de Meo.
So, while it’s not an unraveling of the alliance, it could be a loosening of its ties.
But Nissan has also pushed out key Ghosn allies at the top of the company, including José Muñoz, former chairman of Nissan North America, who now Global Chief Operating Officer of Hyundai Motor Co., as well as President & CEO, Hyundai Motor North America and Hyundai Motor America.
His departure from Nissan coincided with ending the Ghosn’s controversial “stair-step” dealer program, which used cash awards to incentivize retailers to hit aggressive sales goals. Dealers chaffed under the program, arguing Ghosn’s unrealistic demands for market share encouraged price discounting, which in turn diminished resale values and damaged Nissan’s reputation — which it did.
But repudiating stair-step incentives hastened a U.S. market share decline and contributed to two years of losses, even as the pullback is an effort to improve the brand, rather than chasing unprofitable market share.
Datsun’s heritage

Ghosn revived the Datsun nameplate in 2012, with visions of creating a high-volume, low-cost vehicle line using older technology for Third World and emerging markets, including India, South Africa, Indonesia, Russia and Kazakhstan.
The first of the low budget Datsuns debuted in 2014. Initial reports stated that Ghosn hoped to sell 300,000 units annually, but instead, Datsun sold 470,000 vehicles during its revival. Consider India, where Datsun retailed 4,296 units in 2021, a 40% decline from the 40,443 vehicles sold there in 2017.
Online reports say that Nissan is still trying to decide what to do with the Datsun brand, now that manufacturing has ceased.
The Datsun name started in 1911 after Kwaishinsha Jidosha Kojo was founded by M. Hashimoto. Its first car, the DAT Motor Vehicle, got its name from the surnames of the company’s investors: K. Den, R. Aoyama, and M. Takeuchi. In 1931, the company developed a new passenger car, which it named Datson, or son of DAT. In Japanese, however, son means “loss.” So it was changed to “sun” when the car went on sale in March 1932.
Two years later, the company’s merger with Jitsuyo Automobile Co. led to its being renamed Nissan. But the Datsun name continued to be used on its cars, even as the company came to America in 1958.
Within a little more than a decade, the company would introduce the 240Z, and become the first Japanese car company to earn a reputation for being small, reliable and inexpensive. The Datsun name would be used until 1984, when the Nissan badge replaced it. Datsun would be revived 28 years later.