The Nissan Titan Lands in Big 3 Country

Titan Priced Lower than Competitive Full-Size Pickups

Fierce winds buffeted the Motor City uprooting trees and felling power lines the night of November 12, perhaps portending the arrival of Nissans new entry into the full-size pickup market with pricing that may rock the office towers of General Motors, Ford, and DaimlerChrysler.

Launched in October from its new North American assembly plant in Canton, Miss., the 2004 Nissan Titan is expected to draw 25-30 percent of its estimated 100,000 per year buyers from current Nissan owners. The rest will be "conquest buyers" taken from the automakers that are already producing full-size pickups, notably the American Big Three and Japanese rival Toyota, according to Nissan officials during the Automotive Press Association luncheon held at Strohs (Detroit) River Place office building.

With products like the Titan and the new Murano, two of eight new vehicles launched for Nissan and its Infiniti brands in 2003, "Nissan is ready to meet the future as a mature full-line player," said Jed Connelly, senior vice president, Sales and Marketing.

The big news that Connelly dropped on Detroits lap was the Manufacturing Suggested Retail Prices for the Titan that start at $22,400 and $25,100 for its King Cab and Crew Cab XE 4x2 models respectively. The four-wheel drive Crew Cab LE retails at $34,200, about $3,000 below a comparably equipped Ford F-150 pickup.

Note, Nissan doesnt offer a regular cab version of the Titan yet. Nor does the Titan offer a variety of different sized pickup boxes to choose from. Want an eight-foot long bed? Or a shorter bed on the king cab? A potential buyer will have to go shopping somewhere else.

But when it comes to directly competing configurations, Nissan is taking the Big 3 on directly. "Our new Titan offers lower MSRPs and more standard features than comparable 2004 Ford F-150, Chevy Silverado and Dodge Ram models," Connelly said. "We are pricing the Titan with realistic MSRPs that we believe will be closer to the actual prices consumers will pay--rather than pricing higher with room factored in from the beginning for heavy incentives and discounting."

Connelly noted that the prices for competitors full-size pickup trucks had risen an average of $4,000 since January 2001 while incentives jumped to an average of $2,500 per vehicle. With its Titan King Cab SE 4x2 equipped with the SE Popular Package, that includes powered captains chairs plus adjustable pedals, HomeLink, an overhead console and steering wheel audio controls plus its $900 High-Utility Bed Package (with a tie-down system, a lock-box behind the driver side wheel, and factory spray-in bedliner).

The new Titans are just starting to appear in Nissans 1,100 dealers in the United States and the company is preparing for a big TV advertising blitz on November 27, during the National Football League Thanksgiving Day games (one of which includes the Detroit Lions, owned by William Clay Ford Sr.).

From a volume and market share stand point, the Nissan Titan will not have a tremendous impact in the near term, said George Peterson, president of AutoPacific, the California-based car analyst group. Nissan only has a 100,000 unit capacity to build the Titan at its Canton, Miss., assembly plant and cannot make more than a dent in the sales of GM, Ford and Dodge until the automaker adds another assembly plant, expands Canton, or cannibalizes production away from other products built at the plant, such as its new Quest minivan, the Pathfinder Armada SUV, or the new Infiniti SUV.

But, from an image standpoint, the Titan is the first Japanese full-size pickup that directly challenges the American brands with performance, styling and aggressive pricing, Peterson said.

"Everyone is going to be watching Nissan very, very closely," Peterson said. They want to see if the Japanese can get a full-size pickup truck right."

The Titan will probably take more buyers away from Fords "heritage" F-150s--the old style pickups that are still produced at the soon-to-be shuttered Ontario Truck Assembly Plant in Oakville, Ont., Canada--plus the aging Chevrolet Silverado, the oldest of full-size pickup trucks, he said. It will be harder for Nissan to take away Toyota Tundra buyers, who have similar loyalty to their trucks as Chevy buyers, and the recently redesigned Dodge Ram should be able to hold its own, though Ram buyers may like the Titans aggressive styling.

Buyers should be aware that among the Big 3, Nissan as a brand is considered more reliable according to the J.D. Powers and Associates 2003 Vehicle Dependability Study (VDA). At 15th out of 37 total nameplates, it ranks one place ahead of GMC (16), two places in front of Chevrolet (17), eight over Ford (23), with a clear advantage of ten places above Dodge (25).

"Nissan is taking a big bite by launching three new vehicles from Mississippi at the same time and they have room to expand," he noted.

The $1.4 billion, 3.5-million square foot Canton assembly plant officially opened May 27 with the first production 2004 Quest minivan rolling off the line. The plant is capable of building 400,000 vehicles a year (originally it was slated to build 250,000 units annually but received an expansion before the factory was completed), sitting on a 1,400-acre site. In comparison, Fords Rouge River factory complex in Dearborn, in its heyday before the divestiture of its steel division in 1989, sat on approximately 1,100-acres.

The Titan (a vehicle name that was once owned by Chevrolet, but Nissan wont confirm how they acquired the rights to use it) was conceived, developed, and engineered in North America. Full-size pickup trucks equipped for passenger comfort and cargo capacity are, after all, primarily an American and, to a lesser degree, Canadian phenomena.