Nissan Lures Ram Trucks CEO to Run Sales and Marketing, Carlos Ghosn Foreshadowed Move Last Month

In a round of executive musical chairs, Nissan has hired away the CEO of Chrysler’s Ram division, Fred Diaz, to run its sales and marketing in the U.S. Filling Diaz’s spot, Chrysler is moving its execs up through the ranks: The CEO of Dodge is moving over to Ram, the head of Fiat USA takes the reins at Dodge, and a regional Fiat exec from California now is charged with running the Fiat brand here. This isn’t just a boon for the value of your Auto Exec trading cards—let’s face it, we all buy those for the gum—but shows what Nissan thinks it needs. Some have written off the moves as typical executive poaching and shuffling. Others tried to divine the reasons for the personnel change. Speaking with Carlos Ghosn at the New York auto show just a few weeks ago, however, Nissan’s thinking is clear.

“The American pickup truck market, as a country, would be the ninth-largest market in the world”

That Nissan scooped the boss of Ram to be its new head of sales and marketing is no accident. Even as Nissan tries to reduce the total number of models it sells around the world, Mr. Ghosn was unequivocal that the American market for full-size pickup trucks is so big, it justifies a unique model just for us. Even in its prime, though, the Titan was the Glass Joe of the pickup-truck Punch Out world. Now, it’s decrepit, too. A new model, which shares much of its architecture with the big NV van on sale now, will finally arrive in the next two years. (Nissan’s not entirely at fault for that, with Chrysler having backed out on the companies’ deal to collaborate on the next Titan and (now-current) Ram several years ago.) Once a new Titan is here, Nissan will need to tell people that yes, it’s selling a brand-new pickup truck—and that because it’s capable or cool or both, those people should buy one. Given Mr. Ghosn’s impassioned talk of Nissan and the full-size pickup market at that meeting, one imagines that being a truck guy was a near-necessity for a new marketing executive.

“Unless we hit 10 percent in the United States, we’re not having a fair return on the investments we’re doing here.”

Although Diaz is joining Nissan in a “newly created” role for sales and marketing, none should overlook the simultaneous departure of Al Castignetti, VP of the Nissan division in the U.S. We’ve not received any confirmation, even unofficially, that Mr. Castignetti was asked to go, but we don’t see the timing as mere coincidence. The company only said in a statement that Castignetti resigned to “pursue other interests.” A seasoned exec and a real pro, we don’t imagine Castignetti decided to fulfill his lifelong dream of being a master patisserie chef. There’s solid evidence from Mr. Ghosn’s remarks in March that he could be clearing house.

Ghosn was unambiguously unhappy with Nissan’s sales performance of late in the U.S. The company has eight percent of the market here, and he wants to see that number rise to 10. “We have two percent market share to go—very fast,” he said. Although emphasizing that it needs to be sustainable growth, rather than just dumping cars on rental companies or piling proverbial cash on hoods, Ghosn spoke with a sense or urgency. Things have not been going the way he’d like in what should be Nissan’s largest market in the world.

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• Instrumented Test: 2013 Nissan Altima 3.5 V6 SV
• Instrumented Test: 2013 Ram 1500 SLT V6 8-Speed Automatic
• Instrumented Test: 2013 Nissan Sentra SL 1.8

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Of the new Altima, which had a number of weak months before an extremely strong March, Ghosn said “We have a very strong product. Practically on sales, we have some adjustments to make.” One of his advisors added that the company would be taking new action to “regain momentum.” On dealer experiences, Ghosn was similarly frustrated-sounding. ”Unfortunately, the situation is still,” he paused, “We can do a much better job.”

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/caranddriver/blog/~3/BbIRjU6ews8/

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