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NISSAN’S Altima narrowly avoided the chopping block in the Japanese brand’s recently announced model range rationalisation, with the company backing the slow-selling mid-size sedan over the more popular Pulsar small hatch.

Nissan Australia made the surprise announcement last week that the Pulsar hatch – along with the Micra mini-car and ageing Y61-series Patrol – would be dropped by the end of this year, leaving the Pulsar sedan as its sole small-car offering in the all-important segment that makes up about 20 per cent of total new-vehicle sales here.

Nissan Australia managing director and CEO Richard Emery confirmed that the slow-selling Altima – in a segment that accounts for less than six per cent of the market – was also considered when determining which models to drop from the line-up, but ultimately the company chose to discontinue the Pulsar hatch (keeping the more “robust” sedan version) and stick with the larger Altima as well.

Altima vs Pulsar hatch - Click to enlarge

Altima vs Pulsar hatch – Click to enlarge

Launched overseas in 2012, Altima went on sale in Australia late in 2013 and managed only 1791 sales in its first full year on sale here (2014) – equivalent to 150 sales a month – which put it behind Toyota’s dominant Camry and a host of other rivals including the Mazda6, VW Passat, Ford Mondeo, Hyundai i40 and Skoda Octavia.

Last year, Altima sales fell 17 per cent to 1488 units – equivalent to 124 sales a month and less than three per cent of the sub-$60,000 mid-size passenger car segment – and the model found itself in ninth place on the table behind all of the aforementioned rivals plus a resurgent Subaru Liberty and Hyundai’s new Sonata.

It is a similar story this year, with Altima falling 58 per cent after the first quarter compared with the same period in 2015. Just 200 sales were recorded across the first three months of trading, which sends its monthly average down to 67 units.

Nissan Altima

Talking point: Altima was “in the conversation” about being dropped from Nissan’s line-up, but the company will ride through its sales downturn until new-generation products arrive in 2018-19.

This makes the decision to withdraw the Pulsar hatch over the Altima a bold move from Nissan considering the small five-door – albeit not performing as well as the Pulsar sedan in its segment – was still outselling the larger Altima by a mile.

Mr Emery said the Pulsar hatch accounted for around 45 per cent of all Pulsar sales, which means hatch sales would have been around 4730 in 2014, 3830 last year and 650 so far this year – some 5730 sales more than the Altima over the same period.

Pulsar hatch

Nissan Pulsar hatch

However, the Nissan chief said the brand’s representation in the mid-size segment was still deemed important enough for it to stick with Altima until a range of next-generation products became available later this decade.

“Altima certainly is in the conversation,” Mr Emery said in relation to its model range rationalisation. “But having said that we want to be seen as a mainstream brand and in doing so you need to sustain market presence even if you are challenged with your lifecycle plan.

“We are challenged with our lifecycle plan with our passenger cars in an Australian context. That means there is this gap until the new products come on stream.

“You need to balance what is the most critical segments to sustain a presence. We felt that particularly Pulsar sedan and Altima sedan are both products that if we want to continue to be a mainstream brand – and therefore passenger cars need to be part of our portfolio – those two segments, small passenger sedan and the Altima product, we need to be present.

Nissan Pulsar hatch

Nissan Pulsar hatch

“We view both Pulsar sedan and Altima as critical for sustaining our market presence in passenger cars until our lifecycle comes back into play. And that happens with every company, they come in and out of lifecycle advantages and disadvantages.”

Nissan’s multi-million-dollar involvement in the V8 Supercar championship with four Altima racecars would likely have been a factor in the company’s decision to retain the mid-sizer – even if the ‘win on Sunday, sell on Monday’ catchcry has not necessarily applied here.

The contract is due to expire at the end of this year and, as GoAuto has reported, Nissan is still in the process of making a decision about whether to continue in the series.

Nissan Altima

Nissan Altima

As part of the model cull, Nissan ditched its smallest model, the Micra, saying there was “no longer an adequate business case for offering the Micra in Australia”, but Mr Emery said that both the Micra and Pulsar nameplates could potentially return in future products.

“It is too early to rule that in or that rule out. In our research, Pulsar and Micra still hold strong positions in terms of peoples’ recognition of them as a Nissan product,” he said.

“They certainly need to be in the mix and discussions, but we are nowhere near having that discussion in terms of the product offerings, choices we have and what they might be branded as.”

Mr Emery previously told GoAuto that the next model-cycle of passenger cars for Australia would arrive in 2018-2019 and said that there are multiple models in Nissan’s future product catalogue available.

While the 18-year-old Y61-series diesel-powered Patrol was expected to be dropped, Mr Emery suggested the fact that it and the Micra only had a four-star ANCAP crash safety rating also influenced the decision.

Nissan has ditched under-performing or unprofitable models in the past, letting the Micra-based Almera sedan slip away in mid-2014, while the company elected not to import the third-generation Murano SUV due to high import costs from the United States and low sales compared with its other SUV offerings, the Qashqai and X-Trail.

By Tim Nicholson

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