Nissan Titan said to be on the chopping block



(June 30, 2022) Nissan plans to exit the full-size pickup market after years of failing to make a major dent in the giant Detroit-dominated segment, Automotive News reported Wednesday. "There's no plan engineering's working on for replacing it, updating it," a source briefed on the matter told Automotive News. "It's dead."

Two leading industry forecasters, LMC Automotive and AutoForecast Solutions, do not expect Nissan to introduce a redesigned Titan once production of the current generation ends by late 2024. Despite a $230 million update in 2019 that delivered a more powerful V-8 engine and updated styling, the Titan has failed to move the market share needle.

Nissan, a Japanese manufacturer that helped pioneer small pickups in the American market in the 1970s and '80s, has been trying to crack the full-size segment for nearly two decades without much success. The main reasons of the Titan's failure to gain more than a 2 percent share of market over the years are the full-size pickup market expects brands to be competitive with a vast array of variations in different engine and seating configurations; and in the end, truck-driving consumers simply wouldn't give up their loyalties to Ford, Chevrolet, GMC and Ram.

In 2021 Nissan sold only 27,406 Titan pickups for a 1.3 percent market share.

Nissan made multiple efforts at the U.S. segment. The Titan, introduced at the 2003 Detroit auto show, went on sale later that year, with pricing $2,600 to $4,200 below comparable Detroit 3 trucks. Nissan hoped to eventually sell 100,000 a year in the U.S. but sales peaked at 86,945 in 2005.

"Conquesting a brand-loyal Ford customer to come to a Nissan Titan has proven to be extremely difficult," according to a Nissan dealer who requested not to be identified. "Because of their volume, the Detroit 3 have the budget to freshen and bring out new pickup product and technologies a lot faster than Nissan."

Source: Automotive News