Nissan Motor will meet a widely publicised goal of increasing global annual sales by 1 million vehicles, chief executive Carlos Ghosn reportedly said on Thursday, completing a dramatic turnaround for the once troubled Japanese automaker.
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In May 2002, with Nissan teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, the company announced an ambitious goal of increasing annual sales by 1 million vehicles from the 2.4 million units it sold in the year to the end of September, 2001, the Associated Press (AP) said. By the end of this month, Nissan will reach the 3.6 million target, Ghosn said at a round-table discussion at the company’s headquarters in Tokyo.
“The revival process of Nissan is now complete,” Ghosn, who is chief executive of both Nissan and its affiliate, Renault, said.
According to AP, the chief executive said the U.S. market, where Nissan boosted its sales by 380,000 cars in the year to September 30, 2005, had been the biggest contributor to the latest round of Nissan’s turnaround.
But sales in the United States, the world’s largest automobile market, will likely fall below Nissan’s initial expectations, due to a weakening of customer demand after auto makers offered generous discounts to consumers there, Ghosn added.
The damage caused by Hurricane Katrina would also hurt September sales, he said, according to the Associated Press.
