Ken Freund
I’ve always been crazy about anything with an engine.
After years of pestering my father, he finally let me drive a car - at nine years of age. At 14 I taught myself to drive stick shifts and then how to ride motorcycles. Later, I also learned to fly and have had my pilot’s license for 22 years. Working on, riding, driving, restoring, photographing and writing about all these wonderful machines has always been my passion. I've been an auto vo-tech and smog test instructor, certified master technician, vehicle inspector, shop foreman, service manager, service director, and shop owner. Over the years I’ve owned about 35 bikes and 50 cars and trucks, a lot of which I wish I had never sold!
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Will Dodge Build Rams for Nissan?
With the high cost of developing vehicles, partnerships are probably a necessary evil, or at least a reality, if Chrysler is to survive and prosper. Back in November, 2007 I wrote a blog about Chrysler partnering with Nissan. Following that, Nissan and Chrysler announced they will sell a Chrysler-badged version of the Nissan Versa in South America. Chrysler is also working on a version of its minivan that it will soon begin making for VW, and another small-car project with Chinese manufacturer Chery.
No big deal for Ram enthusiasts, but now there’s more. Several sources report that a second Nissan product partnership is underway. This one involves full-size Ram pickups. Interested now?
Nissan has been disappointed with sales of its Titan pickup, which came out in late 2003. The Titan is now due for a major update, which is very costly. So instead, Nissan is considering simply buying a rebadged version of the new Dodge Ram, which made its debut at the Detroit Auto Show. A few years ago this would have been unthinkable.
Major decisions like whether Nissan would assemble the trucks at its Canton, Mississippi factory, or let Dodge build them on its own pickup-truck line are still undecided. Dodge Rams are available in a wide range of cab, chassis, and engine configurations. Other considerations, such as how different the Nissan and Dodge versions will be, and whether Nissan will have the same wide variety of options, including our beloved Cummins diesel option, are said to still be in the works.
The Japanese seem to have had a much harder time figuring out the full-sized American pickup truck market than any other segment of the auto industry. I think there are a number of reasons for this. One major factor is that pickups offered by the American Big Three have huge option lists and come in a slew of varieties which allow buyers to tailor the truck more closely to their needs. None of the Japanese manufacturers have offered a dually, a heavy duty diesel, or a true ¾ or 1-ton pickup with the payload and tow ratings of the American brands. It also seems like full-size pickup truck buyers tend to be more pro buy American than other groups of new-vehicle buyers.
This move by Nissan seems to be a tacit admission of their inability to capture this last big chunk of the pie. What do you think of Dodge selling rebadged Rams as Nissans, or of Nissan selling Titans which are really Rams?
