Nissan boss challenges Hyundai, Mazda

The Japanese brand has lofty goals of becoming the number one importer and taking leadership of the small car market, led by the returning Pulsar small car in early 2013, which he says will have an impact on Mazda and Hyundai. 

"We are aiming to be number one importer with the launch of Pulsar - which is in early 2013." 

"Pulsar will add thousands to our 2012 tally, we have every intent with Pulsar to be number one in that segment, it won't happen at launch - we will do a staggered launch, sedan, hatch and then we've lined up two or three life-cycle actions, the first two years of Pulsar will be really aggressive," he says. 

Nissan will make up for lost time and is aiming to be the country's number-one importer - "We've got quite a bit of new product next FY year, with Patrol in late 2012, Leaf in June, Almera will come in August (a small sedan off the Micra platform) - they are not big volume products, that will come with Pulsar, we'll take share from Hyundai and Mazda with Pulsar," Mr Thompson says.

The Japanese brand boss says there's been investments made in its dealer network and the brand has worked with the product hand it was dealt and not rested on its new-product laurels - "Dualis, in 2007 it was 150 to 1000 now, X-Trail was 600 and it's up to 1500, a lot of this growth is working with what we had first," he says.

A flood of new product will be surging from Australian showrooms by 2015, something that in the last two years Nissan has managed to grow without.

"The product that we have coming down the pipe for Australia is the best I've ever seen."

The outgoing managing director is headed for a new job for the Nissan brand - Vice President of Finance for Nissan Europe - and will be disappointed he's not here to see the plans go into action.

"I'm disappointed not to be here to see all the new cars for Nissan and Infiniti coming, I'll be watching - I'm satisfied the team is ready to do the job we set out to do four years ago, it's not easy launching four new products so by no means is the job finished - there's still a lot to do," he said.

While the brand will bring in the Leaf electric car, introduce the Altera and resurrect the Patrol and Maxima models, it will be the popular Pulsar badge that will take the lion's share of responsibility for Nissan's growth, says Thompson.

"In 2010 Nissan was the fastest growing brand, we set in fiscal year 2011 to do the same, but natural disasters stopped that and we have VW and Hyundai who weren't effected."

"As we go into FY2012 we're aiming for 85,000 units, the FY11 result will be our best ever as a full-line importer."

The Japanese brand will also have Infiniti coming into the market during August - initially only along the East coast but in petrol, diesel and hybrid guises - with the rest of the country on the agenda over the new few years, depending on sales volume and demand.