EXCLUSIVE: Datsun's third product will be a compact sedan

Surprise! Everyone has been talking about a compact sedan from Nissan. The information is true that the Japanese car maker is working on a compact sedan and there have been several reports on it. However, we learnt that Nissan is working on a compact sedan for the Datsun brand than Nissan.

This will be based on the Micra platform, however its wheelbase will be shorter than the Sunny. It will be a lot cheaper than the Micra top-of-the-line and it will also target the first-time car buyer.

At the moment, Nissan is busy working on the Datsun Go+ for the Indian car market as Datsun will get 50% of the sales for Nissan. The Datsun brand will be the low cost brand for the Japanese manufacturer and more focus will be levied on this. The Go has helped them double their current sales already.

Nissan plans to get 10 percent of the Indian car market share and at the moment it has about 2. To reach this target, the Nissan brand will work on getting five percent and the other five will be from the Datsun brand. The Datsun brand made its global debut in India and the Go has got a good response from the Indian car buyers. To multiple this growth for Nissan, the Datsun brand needs more such products to increase its customer reach and also open more number of showrooms.

At the moment, the company has plans to have 300 dealerships by the end of next year. Also, to further enhance the Datsun brand, the dealerships for this will branch out from the existing Nissan dealerships. This will help Datsun to reach it target audience in a better way as a separate team will be focusing on selling the Datsun, whereas now the same dealership is responsible for selling both the vehicles.

At this year’s Auto Expo, Nissan had showcased the Go+ and had slated a launch for this MPV sometime by the end of this year. The company understands that the MPV segment is where buyers are shifting and hence it has worked on to get the Go+ without losing any time. The other products to enter this segment will be Renault Lodgy  and the already existing Chevrolet Tavera.  The compact sedan segment too is on the rise as the DZire sales haven’t dropped despite the introduction of Amaze, XCent and very soon the Zest.