Nissan Pulsar News

Earlier this month, Audi unveiled a retro-inspired small electric vehicle that is a homage to a car that failed a quarter of a century ago. Spectacularly.Chances are the timely and handsome new A2 will succeed where the overpriced and oddly styled original from 2001 could not, but referencing a flop seems risky.It’s like Ford reviving the AU Falcon (though to be fair it is having a moment), or General Motors exhuming Holden with an ode to the ZB Commodore. Or Epica.Which has us thinking: this isn’t the first time that nostalgia, perhaps served with a side plate of delusion, has led to some confounding decisions.Whether they sold or were received poorly, we outline five resurrections that flopped.And if you disagree, let us know why in the comments below.How the millennial Monaro came about requires context.Holden enjoyed two golden eras: the early years, and for half a decade from 1997, after the then-new VT Commodore became a runaway smash hit.And the next year’s Australian International Motor Show in Sydney was pivotal.Codenamed Monica, the 1998 Holden Coupe Concept – essentially a VT with two doors, a slightly more-rakish windscreen and four (lower) seats – stole the show like no other car ever had before or since.At the time, Holden wasn’t even planning to build it. After all, coupe shelf lives are notoriously short. The original HK Monaro of 1968 proved popular initially, but its HQ-HX successors from 1971 struggled.The Coupe Concept utterly overshadowed Ford’s debuting AU Falcon at the Sydney show, made national news and created a buzz that helped bolster the brand. It was nothing short of sensational. Journalists immediately dubbed it Monaro, something Holden was understandably wary of.Despite what some articles today state, the resulting V2 Monaro failed to meet internal sales expectations when it arrived far later than scheduled, in November, 2001.Priced beyond most buyers’ reach from nearly $95,000 adjusted for inflation today, it went on to account for only a fraction of Commodore volume, at 4274 versus 88,478 units, putting it at 47 spot.From there, sales never improved, and the US-market Pontiac GTO export version of 2004 also failed to find a large-enough audience.By then, GM was floundering as the world moved away from sedans and coupes, in favour of SUVs, with the planned next-generation VE Monaro promptly canned, save for the 2008 Coupe 60 Concept to celebrate Holden’s 60 Anniversary.The Datsun 1600 is regarded as one of Japan’s earliest greats.Launched in 1967, it combined elegant styling with European-style chassis sophistication, to create a brilliant little sedan that dominated world rallying as effortlessly as it won over owners’ hearts.However, the larger and heavier 180B and 200B replacements of 1972 and 1976 respectively completely lacked the 1600’s sporty charm.Stung by widespread criticism, Datsun attempted to recreate the magic with the Stanza in 1978.But, built down to a price, it sorely lacked the fun and finesse that endeared so many owners to the old 1600. Critics were ruthless in their reviews. And though relatively popular and successful in motorsport, the Stanza couldn’t replicate the old 1600’s greatness and lasted only a single generation in Australia.By all objective means, any NSX is a masterpiece.Be it the exquisite 1990 NA1 original that became the first mid-engined supercar in history to love you back, or the NC1 tri-electric motor petrol/hybrid AWD successor of 2016 that was a breathtaking technological showcase, the name signifies engineering mastery.However, while neither generation achieved the sales volumes Honda required, the original has enjoyed a glorious afterlife as one of the all-time sports car greats.But the latter? Sadly, the second – or American – NSX remains misunderstood as being too advanced, and not “analogue” enough for drivers to truly connect with. That Honda cancelled it early (except in Japan) has not helped.Maybe the NC1 was just a decade before its time. Still an amazing achievement.One of Japan’s earliest Volkswagen Golf clones, the Pulsar became a beloved small-car staple in Australia over 25 years and six generations from 1980.That was until Nissan was forced to switch to a smaller replacement with awkward styling, ambitious pricing and a silly name.Inevitably, the 2006 Tiida tanked, even as Australians were clamouring towards smaller cars in the wake of soaring fuel prices. This was the era where the Mazda 3 and Toyota Corolla were king, but Nissan missed the party completely.The reason why the Pulsar ended was that it never properly challenged the Golf, so instead Nissan devised the Qashqai crossover, which immediately became a sales phenomenon.Somehow, Nissan Australia convinced a reluctant Japan to allow the redesigned Tiida hatch of 2012 to be rebadged Pulsar, along with the Thai market Sylphy sedan.Hopes were high of a sales revival but neither interloper possessed the required sophistication or appeal to lure local consumers back. Both Pulsar iterations never saw out their model cycle.The rear-engined air-cooled Beetle, which changed comparatively little between 1937 and 2003, remains the world’s best-selling vehicle of all time, at 21.5 million units.In contrast, the Toyota Corolla regenerated 12 times to date for it to find 50 million buyers.The re-imagined New Beetle, released globally in 1997 and 2000 in Australia, based on the versatile Golf IV architecture and built inexpensively in Mexico, sold strongly at first.But demand tapered off markedly as per most fashion statements, especially when BMW’s Mini reset the bar for retro remakes from 2001.However, after nearly 1.2 million units, VW’s third attempt, officially known as the “The Beetle”, struggled from the outset in 2012, despite featuring significantly more sophisticated drivetrains.Gone by 2019, barely 550,000 units were produced worldwide.

Cathy, Thorpey, Kylie and Nikki had just shown the world that Australia can hold its own in sports and culture, we’d given quite a few of our guns away, the Millenial Bug wasn’t such a concern anymore… and three sedans dominated Aussie roads.A quarter of a century ago, the year 2000 was just in the rear-view, and the sales charts looked very different to today.What better time than 25 years later to look back at the cars and brands Australians were heading to the showroom for?Not only were there fewer utes and SUVs being sold, they didn’t even make up a third of the new vehicle sales in the country combined that year. Utes and SUVs were lumped together in the same section of the VFACTS report (the sales figures industry stakeholders, pundits and media receive each month) alongside heavy trucks.Only 8413 new Toyota RAV4s were sold, making the Daewoo Lanos (9029 sales) more popular that year. Compare that to 2025, when the RAV4 ranked second in sales for the year with a whopping 51,947 units, only topped by the Ranger (56,555).Speaking of which, how did our now-favourite utes fare in 2000? The Ford Courier, the Ranger’s predecessor, sold just 6769 units, while the HiLux managed to hop into the top 10 with 21,509 sales. Still somewhat short of its 51,297 in 2025.To be fair, if you’d asked someone if they were buying a Ford ute, the Courier wouldn’t have been the first thing to come to mind. Ford sold 13,698 Falcon utes in the year 2000, putting it well ahead of its Commodore rival’s 6361.That can be explained easily, Holden didn't build a new ute for the VT generation Commodore of the late-’90s, instead continuing to sell the VS ute alongside the VT sedan.The near-new AU Falcon ute (released in mid-1999) had the car-based ute market covered for the turn of the century.Those two now-gone badges, along with the enduring Toyota Camry and the impressive Mitsubishi Magna, were impossible to avoid on Aussie roads then, with the Commodore, Falcon, Camry and Magna being first, second, third and fifth (thanks to the Corolla in fourth) most popular cars in the country in 2000.Between them they contributed to the total 198,766 large passenger cars sold in 2000, which made up 35.9 per cent of the year’s new vehicle sales. In 2025, large passenger cars made up just 2285 sales, or 0.2 per cent of the market.Small cars made up the other major chunk of sales back in 2000, with 154,050 sales being 27.8 per cent of the market. They were 72,222 sales and 6.0 per cent of last year’s market share.The aforementioned Daewoo was in the top 10 brands (just) in terms of sales for the year 2000, but was the only brand in that list that no longer exists.A scroll through the list shows other long-gone names like Daihatsu, Saab and Proton, and one not-so-long-gone name — Citroen.Daewoo Nubira? Daihatsu Sirion? Even the Proton Satria? These forgotten cars all sold in the thousands back then.Giants like Kia and Hyundai have come a long way, too. The brands once known for the Excel or Accent, plus the Kia Rio in its most ‘cheap and cheerful’ phase (RIP) are now global powerhouses with new technology and reliability commonly in the same sentence as their badge names. Hyundai, at least, was still a top-10 player back then.Below, there are tables with the most popular models and brands from the year 2000 and the figures we gleaned from the data — note the badge names have been consolidated so that cars with Commodore (for example) includes all body types.Top 10 cars sold in Australia in 2000Top 10 cars brands in Australia in 2000  

Here are the popular models no longer available in Australia that are living an extended or second life elsewhere.

You’re looking for a second-hand car. It could be your first car or just the next car, the thing is money is tight and you don’t want to pick a lemon - a dud. You could end up wasting your hard-earned, having to pay more in repairs and then have trouble selling it on.

Will Nissan make a crossover version of the Skyline? And, what happened to these Nissan passenger cars which were once popular in Australia?

Prices of anything vaguely collectible and Australian-made have really gone through the roof lately. The reasons depend on who you talk to, but it’s obvious that stay-at-home rules have led some people to use what would have been annual-holiday money to buy themselves a weekend car. And what could be better than a genuine Aussie original?

Australia is regarded as one of the world’s most sophisticated and mature vehicle markets. We’re right up there with the richest.

If you’re in the market for a new automatic car with a budget of $20,000 or under, we’ve got bad news: There are only five brand new automatic car models left.

On the surface, rumours this week Nissan is planning to focus its efforts (and money) on the US and Japanese markets looks like bad news.

Nissan Motor Company is set to trim at least 10 per cent of its global model line-up by March 31, 2022, in a bid to streamline production and boost profitability amidst dwindling sales.