We maybe seeing more dealers opening soon.
We maybe seeing more dealers opening soon.
Nissan is planning to open 400 new dealerships in Europe over the next three years, in addition to 600 opened during the last five years.
Combined with a slew of new models, the company hopes this will help it overtake Japanese rival Toyota.
"Our ambition is to... eventually become the number one Japanese brand in Europe," Simon Thomas, head of sales and marketing in Europe, told BBC News.
During the last two years, Nissan has launched 10 new models.
"We've got one of the youngest ranges of any brand in Europe," said Mr Thomas.
"We also have the widest product range in Europe. We are represented in more segments than any other brand in Europe with 24 products."
Crossover sales
Last year, Nissan had a 3.1% market share. During the first two months of this year, that rose to about 3.5%, helped by strong and growing sales of its Qashqai crossover and healthy demand for its smaller Juke.
"That's the kind of level we think we can achieve for the rest of this year," said Mr Thomas.
In Europe, Nissan sells one-in-four crossovers, which combine the high ride of 4x4s with the fuel economy and driving style of ordinary cars.
And although more and more rivals are piling in, the company predicts that the crossover segment will continue to grow.
"Our long-term ambition is to reach a 5% market share."
'Sustainable growth'
Nissan's brave talk has done little to rattle the world's largest carmaker Toyota, however.
"Everybody's got very ambitious targets," said Didier Leroy, president of Toyota Motor Europe.
"But we expect our sales to rise 10% this year. Every single month since September we've beaten our sales targets in Europe."
Toyota is slowly recovering from the damage caused by mass recalls of cars during 2010, backed by a broader range of petrol-electric hybrid cars.
"We want to develop sustainable growth in Europe," Mr Leroy said.
"We're not rushing for market share. We're not rushing for volume. We want to do it in a profitable way."
and yet i think of a nissan car i would want to use every day and i can only think of two, the x-trail or the GTR
There is no decent executive saloon, their super-minis are naff, no mid-range hot hatch
I hardly see any nissan's ont he road now except micra's
I see this being an epic fail on nissans behalf
Is it Nissan they are planning to expand or is this including Infiniti? There are already quite a few Nissan dealers aren't there?
They have to do what Toyota does, there's no point in a Nissan executive saloon as no one is going to buy that, Infiniti has to do what Lexus has done, but at the moment they are trying to charge too much imho.
But why not? everybody said there was no point in Seat doing an executive saloon but they nailed it with the Exeo,
Skoda nailed it with the Octavia and Volvo have drastically updated there exec saloons to compete with bmw/audi/VW
so its not un-realistic, and a company with the backing like Nissan surely could produce an immense exec saloon.
Also the hot hatch market? they could make a mini gtr and wipe the floor with everybody else?
I jsut dont udnerstand the ploy of more dealers equals more market share, they need better products imho
The Nissan exec saloons are Infinitis, the Skyline is the G37, and the others are too (although I'm not sure on names).
I just don't see a car like the Nissan Maxima being popular in this country, they sold it in the past and it just doesn't sell.
The key to Nissan's growth is Infiniti, and they've figured it out as I'm sure that's a big reason for their sponsorship of the Red Bull F1 team.
But jsut infiniti on its own cant grow the brand enough to warrant 500 dealerships?
The comparison with Toyota/Lexus is a rubbish one because toyota has the avensis, corrola T2 etc, and lexus is almsot treated as a different marque
I just really dont see how it is going to be THAT beneficial?
I guess the car makers knows more than me but from a ground point of view it seems daft
Err I think Toyota would disagree with you slightly that Lexus has been pointless!
It's all across Europe by the way, not just the UK.
You only have to look at facts to see what the best option is, Nissan and Toyota have all sold exec cars in the past and no one buys them. Nissan sold the Primera until recently and have obviously stopped selling that too because they weren't selling enough.
Nissan have made a mistake not copying Toyota's strategy with introducing Infiniti - we'll see how it turns out. They obviously agree Infiniti is the way forward, the Red Bull deal will cost them several million a year.