The product sharing policy for the Indian market between Japanese car maker Nissan and French auto giant Renault is going to come to an end. Nissan will be launching a compact Sports Utility Vehicle (SUV), Terrano, which is going to be its last cross badged product for the Indian auto market. The Nissan Terrano will be based on its twin compact SUV, Renault Duster, which has enjoyed a high rate of success, being appreciated by both critics and consumers. Although no official date has been decided upon, speculations are rife that Nissan is expected to launch the Terrano by the end of 2013.
The design of the Terrano will be bold, stylish and quite different from the Renault Duster. Nissan hopes to ride on looks, performance and the power of the compact SUV to replicate the success of the Duster. It must be noted that cross badged engineering has been one of the most prominent features of the Renault-Nissan alliance in India. The Nissan Terrano - Renault Duster combination would be the third product developed on the cross badge engineering concept.
Previously, concepts have been shared by Renault Pulse – Nissan Micra and Renault Scala – Nissan Sunny. The alliance between Renault and Nissan, involving product sharing, is a combined strategy that aims at the development of vehicles at low cost and high speed. However, this operation has not performed to the kind of level it was expected. At a recent press conference, officials from the company were asked about the reason behind this sudden stop to the product sharing strategy. One of the official, replying to the question, had admitted that there are certain lessons, which need to be learnt from their mistakes in the past.
Nissan has an aggressive strategy with regards to the Indian car market, which involves an increase in the market share. To facilitate this, the Japanese car maker is introducing a number of new vehicles in the country. Notably, it has also re-introduced the Datsun brand for fast emerging markets in the world, such as India, Indonesia and Russia.
Although the concept of product sharing will come to an end, Nissan and Renault would still be sharing manufacturing facilities. The alliance is currently working on the development of a new platform, called the CMF-A, which is based on the Common Module Family system. This platform will be covering the category of cars that will be affordable. It is expected that the production of cars based on the CMF-A platform will start by 2015, at Renault-Nissan's Chennai plant.
