With Datsun bowing out, yet another people's car bites the dust

With Nissan Motor rebooting its priorities, there was really no place any-longer for Datsun. It was Carlos Ghosn who spear-headed its revival a decade ago but times have changed since then, says Murali Gopalan as he tracks the journey of this ambitious car project that started a decade ago.

- Murali Gopalan

Nissan Motor's decision to pull the plug on production of the Datsun in India was not entirely surprising.

This was waiting to happen since it was now a foregone conclusion that the brand was not living up to its potential in other emerging markets like Indonesia and Russia either. Beyond this, lay the reality that an already stressed Nissan just could not afford to sustain a lossmaking brand like Datsun any longer especially when it had to put its house in order quickly.

In a way, the death of Datsun - dramatic as it may sound - is yet another nail in the coffin for the Carlos Ghosn legacy. It was his brainwave to revive Datsun, albeit in a completely different avatar, as the accessible car brand for markets like India, Russia, Brazil, Indonesia and South Africa.

Ghosn was absolutely right in his reading that people in these regions needed affordable mobility and it therefore made sense to have a product that would fit their needs. The former CEO of Renault-Nissan was obsessed with the idea of frugal engineering and the need to serve up something appropriate in emerging markets which had tremendous potential but with lower per capita incomes.

Datsun was revived as a brand in a completely different role to meet the needs of entry-level car buyers in India, Indonesia, South Africa and Brazil.

A car for the masses

It was also in this context that Ghosn was absolutely impressed with what the Tata Nano had achieved in terms of its costing structure and the Rs 1-lakh publicity campaign even before its unveiling at the 2008 Delhi Auto Expo had caught the attention of the world. When the covers were taken off the people's car at the Expo, the crowd present there erupted into loud applause and literally went berserk applauding the effort.