Despite no expectation it will become a big seller, Nissan Australia has given the third-generation Murano crossover the green light for local launch even while it is in the midst of a significant model cull.
The next Murano survives because it has judged to have character and that’s something new Nissan Australia boss Richard Emery has made clear the company needs, describing its current image as “vanilla”.
Emery’s consolidation and simplification of the local line-up sets 2000 sales per annum as a minimum sales level for mainstream models to stay alive. The Murano averages 1891 sales per annum in Australia according to VFACTS, excluding the year it was launched (2005) and this year.
As forecast by motoring.com.au in May, the Almera small sedan has already been cut, the new QASHQAI compact SUV has fewer models in its range than the Dualis it replaced, while the Pulsar hatch also seems certain to lose variants by the new year.
But Emery says the new Murano, which was unveiled at the New York auto show in April, is expected to add personality and character to the SUV range, at least in part because it leads the way introducing Nissan’s new design language.
“Murano is still a year and a half away and if you put the 2000 cars test over it you might put a question mark on it,” said Emery. “But that’s a typical car where I probably wouldn’t.
“Murano is one of those cars that you might actually say we will stick with it. It’s a well-known nameplate, it’s been successful, it has loyal owners. Will we make a lot of money out of it selling 1800 per year? Probably not.
“But it probably adds something to that SUV range, particularly if it is the first example of this new styling regime they are putting through.
“A car has to be able to offer us some intrinsic value,” he added. “It’s not just about volume and potential income.”
Emery said the Almera wasn’t aiding the Nissan brand in any concrete way.
“If I look back at the two and a half years of Almera it probably hasn’t added any value to our business. There has probably been a little bit of substitution. We probably have gained a little bit of business at fleet and rental level, which is not particularly lucrative.
“So I don’t think it has added to the business, I think it has more complicated the business by adding another model.
“With Almera we were struggling to do a couple of hundred cars a month and at really non-economical levels. So it was a pretty easy decision.”
But Emery made it clear the entry-level Micra mini-car, upon which the Almera mechanical package was based, is not at risk, even though only 1000 examples have been sold in the first six months of 2014, according to VFACTS figures.
“I have to say we need to get our act together on Micra. We lost some focus on Micra over the last couple of years while we were concentrating on some other fires. But Micra can do better than it is. I think we are the guilty party there on Micra rather than the car itself.
“We need to get back into that end of the business and be a bit more focussed on it.”