New look Nissan passenger car line-up spearheads sales

Both the NP200 half-tonner and NP300 one-tonner ranges were simply absent from showroom floors, as the nation-wide strike which started in August hit home with stoppages at the Rosslyn plant compounded by similar action at component suppliers. Production losses amounted to some 1,600 units.

But every cloud has a silver lining, and the month highlighted the impact which the Almera and Sentra sedans are having in the B and C segments respectively, while Micra put in another strong performance in the supermini market, with sales of 495 sales. A similar volume for Almera helped Nissan to achieve sales approaching 1 000 units in the all-important B-segment.

Says Nissan South Africa's Sales, Marketing and Aftersales Director Johan Kleynhans: "Under the circumstances, the month turned out better than expected and we had half a year of steady growth in our passenger car sales - this was our best performance since February. Almera and Sentra helped us to a nine percent market share, and in fact we only dropped 119 units compared to August."