Market Insight: Alliance winners and losers

IT WAS an unusual alliance of Japanese and French cultures and critics said it would follow the same disastrous path trodden by Daimler when it courted, briefly and expensively, Chrysler.

But the alliance of Renault, Nissan and Mitsubishi has endured with all the romance of a government bulletin and all the backroom espionage of World War Two resistance fighters.

Now Nissan and its French partner Renault have admitted they are at counselling and talking about the future of their 25-year-old relationship.

In talks, Nissan may increase its stake in the alliance by investing in a new Renault electric vehicle venture while Renault may dilute its shareholding in Nissan to a more equitable level. Renault owns 43 per cent of Nissan but the Japanese car-maker owns only 15 per cent of Renault.

Mitsubishi may also invest in Renault’s EV unit, further cementing the business deal and bringing Mitsubishi closer to its partners.

On the global market, Nissan is by far the biggest car-maker with 3.88 million vehicles produced in 2021, down 4.3 per cent on the previous year, ahead of Renault with 2.82 million units (down 4.5 per cent) and Mitsubishi with 813,829 (up 60.9 per cent).

In Australia, the pecking order is quite different. Mitsubishi outsells – and has for at least the past eight years – Nissan by about 40 per cent and Renault by 90 per cent.

But this ratio is changing. The COVID-19 pandemic and its devastating effect on vehicle and component production, labour shortages and logistics, has bitten hard into Nissan.

Further causing frustration in the Nissan camp is the successful run-out of the X-Trail medium SUV and Qashqai small SUV, and the unexpected long wait for the new-generation model replacements. 

X-Trail and Qashqai normally contribute around 14,000 and 6000 units respectively a year to the brand’s sales. The Pathfinder large SUV is also normally a 2500-plus unit seller a year. 

Late 2021 and all of this year has been a period in which Nissan essentially had virtually no sales of its key models. The Qashqai, year to date, has sold only nine units. The X-Trail has achieved 6236 deliveries and Pathfinder found only 146 new owners.

In the year-to-date data, Nissan is down 33.7 per cent with 20,988 sales to the end of September. Alliance partners Mitsubishi is up 16.1 per cent (60,523 sales) while Renault is up 39.9 per cent (7119 sales).

Nissan has been thwarted by lack of stock, pushing attention on the showroom floor to the Navara 4x4 ute (7500 sales to date) and especially the Patrol V8 wagon, with 4499 sales this year, up 52.5 per cent on the same nine months of 2021.

Some of the problem in Australia is Nissan’s lack of passenger cars (except the GT-R and Z sportscars), removing any ability for buyers to move to a similar-size vehicle when their chosen SUV is unavailable.

Globally, Nissan’s most popular model is the X-Trail (Rogue), followed by the Sentra (sedan), Note (hatch), Altima and Almera (sedans), and Versa (hatch).

Mitsubishi is selling more vehicles – three times as much this year – with its most popular being the Triton 4x4 that has sold 20,337 units to date. It’s followed by the Outlander and then the ASX.

Its sales this year are 60,523, up 16.1 per cent on the same time in 2021, trending above the 2021 figures and closing in on the 84,000-odd units sold in 2018, its best result in the past eight years.

Renault has sold 7099 units YTD, which is down on its historic figures – it sold 11,500 units in calendar year 2015 – but is building on 2021 with interest in its Arkana coupe-SUV, upcoming Austral SUV (replacing the Kadjar) and a new all-electric Megane.

In a neat tie-up with Mitsubishi and to show the power of the alliance, the next Mitsubishi ASX for Europe is based on the Renault Captur. However, there is no confirmation that the same Renault-based ASX – which is made in Spain and not in Japan as the current ASX – is bound for Australia as yet.