HomeCar NewsDatsun Discontinued in Indonesia due to poor demand

Datsun Discontinued in Indonesia due to poor demand

Datsun India (under Nissan India) is working on 2020 BS6-compliant Redi-GO hatchback

Nissan Indonesia has officially pulled the plug on its Datsun sub-brand. Datsun Indonesia line-up included Go hatchback, Go+ mini-MPV and Go Cross raised hatch. The decision was made by Nissan Indonesia due to plummeting demand for Datsun products. Datsun Indonesia is relatively new on the market and was able to gather only 7,000 units in sales last year.

The Japanese automaker had two plants in Indonesia: Karawang and Purwakarta facilities; both of which were closed in September 2019 and January 2020, respectively. Nissan Indonesia has now shifted all its operations to a Mitsubishi facility which makes Nissan Livina MPV (based on Mitsubishi Xpander). Products such as Nissan Navara and Terra are imported from Thailand while X-Trail and Serena are shipped from Japan. Nissan will introduce Thailand-made Kicks crossover in Indonesia soon.

Datsun shutdown india
Best selling Datsun car in India.

Shutting of the two plants aligns with Nissan’s business strategy to cut down its capacity by 10 per cent. The plan was set in 2019 and translates to a loss of roughly 12,500 jobs, globally. Nissan is also looking forward to phasing out Datsun entirely from global automotive market by 2022. Datsun Indonesia will continue to operate till its remaining stocks last.

It is rather ironic to see Datsun being discontinued by its parent company, since Nissan itself was formed in 1930s from the then-dominant Datsun brand. In fact, Nissan logo (which will receive a major update soon) was derived from original Datsun logo. Modern-day Datsun brand was formed to be a major player in the budget segment in potential markets such as India, Indonesia, Russia and South Africa.

Coming to Indian market, neither Nissan nor Datsun have been doing particularly well lately. However, Datsun India is working on 2020 Redi-GO BS6 version while Nissan is actively involved in the development of an all-new compact-SUV to rival Maruti Suzuki Vitara Brezza, Mahindra XUV300, Tata Nexon and Hyundai Venue.

World is going through some rough patches and a lot of uncertainty has raised in the global automotive sector. Many major OEMs operating in India have shut down their production facilities due to coronavirus pandemic. The losses created as a direct result accounts to around Rs 1,500 crore per day! Situation is expected to become worse if the trend continues and one can only hope that things would take a positive turn.

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