Nissan here to thrive, not survive: Aussie MD

NISSAN Oceania managing director Steve Milette says the Japanese car-maker will not follow rivals that have responded to Australia’s crowded new-vehicle market by cutting sales ambitions and reducing dealer network coverage.

Instead, the brand is “adopting a challenger mindset” and Mr Milette insists that Nissan is in the Australian market “to thrive” rather than merely survive despite sales shrinking 33.6 per cent in the first eight months of this year and 21.6 per cent in 2025.

Speaking to GoAuto at the launch of the front-wheel-drive X-Trail E-Power and X-Trail Rock Creek in New Zealand, Mr Milette – who took the helm of Nissan’s Australian and New Zealand operations on April 1 this year – said he had been confronted on arrival by questions over the brand’s future.

“When I got here, I (was asked) a lot of questions like, ‘you guys here to stay?’, or articles would be written up with ‘these two brands are leaving’ and our logo would show up,” he said.

“I was like, ‘what the hell? The article has nothing to do with us’ as I’d say we’re here to stay and grow.

“We’re not here to just to survive. We’re here to thrive.”

Mr Milette said the local business plan had largely been settled before he arrived but that his team had since been rebuilding Nissan’s mid-term plan around a market that had shifted significantly toward electrification this year.

He added that the car-maker’s global ‘Re:Nissan’ restructure, which has focused on consolidating vehicle production and headquarters staffing, “did not really touch us” and that local decisions not to import particular models had been made on their own merits.

Nissan Casting Australia Plant (NCAP) in Melbourne’s Dandenong South has also survived the cuts and plays an increasingly important role supplying components for the five-in-one E-Power drive system that is proliferating throughout the car-maker’s global product line-up.

Without naming names, Mr Milette said some established brands had reached a fork in the road and chosen to retreat.

“And you hang a left, and you say, ‘Well, there’s new realities in my marketplace. We’re going to hunker down. We’re going to sell the best 20,000 units we can sell in this market, and we’re going to shrink our network size.’ And that’s not us,” he said.

“The decision is we have the portfolio that’s right around the corner, and we’re going to go back into growth mode. And although we’ve been here 60 years, we’re adopting a challenger mindset.”

Potential new Nissans beyond the incoming Y63 series Patrol originate from the car-maker’s partnership with Dongfeng in China, such as the battery electric NX8 medium SUV and N7 medium sedan, and a plug-in hybrid Frontier Pro ute that could inherit Navara nomenclature Down Under.

Among these, the ute is most likely to be greenlit first and quickest to arrive.

“We have to adapt as if we were the new challenger among this new distraction in our world. That’s the mindset we’re taking,” added Mr Milette.

Mr Milette agreed that the conveyor belt of new brands and models entering the market could be a distraction for buyers but predicted that many of the newcomers would fall short of their targets.

“I’m sure they all aspire to sell 10,000 cars or 15,000 or 20,000, and many won’t,” he said.

“We’ve been here, and we’re going to fight through this, and we’ll be here not only next year but in 60 years.”

Mr Milette singled out the medium SUV in which the X-Trail competes as the market’s busiest.

“That segment is the most crowded. It is probably the fastest growing, or maybe second fastest growing in the last 12 months. There’s 37 players (and) Chinese brands have 40 per cent market share,” he said.

VFACTS and EVC data show 37 brands recorded medium SUV sales in both June and July and that the segment was the market’s fastest growing over the 12 months to August, up 24.9 per cent to 370,870 units.

Chinese brands accounted for 32.1 per cent of medium SUV sales in the first seven months of 2026, peaking at 37.6 per cent in June.

“Our challenge is to cut through the noise because people are distracted,” continued Mr Milette.

He added that Nissan’s six decades in Australia gave it an advantage over newer arrivals that it intends to exploit.

“We have 60 years of quality in this country, and you could say the same with X-Trail. And so, is it something we’re pushing? Yes, because it’s something we have that others don’t,” he said.

“Is a brand important? It’s more important than ever, right? Because you do have history, you do have legacy. Some people learn to drive in Nissans in Australia; they didn’t learn to drive in whatever else is in the marketplace.”

The growth plan will be helped by a shift to global platform families, which Mr Milette said was shrinking the gap between left- and right-hand-drive launches – citing the next-generation X-Trail as an example.

“I think the next-generation X-Trail is a testament to that. Between the first ones in the USA or Canada and the first right-hand drive markets like us, it’s less than 12 months,” he said.

“Whereas before it was a couple model years.”

Nissan USA has said the new Rogue (the X-Trail’s North American twin) will go on sale there in late 2026.

The current-generation X-Trail arrived in Australia in 2023, and its successor is expected to launch here late next year or early 2028 with an all-hybrid drivetrain offering.