Volume no longer a dirty word as Nissan looks to grow again

Nissan’s new Arc global mid-term plan carrying it to 2026 included a promise that we haven’t heard from a manufacturer for a while: it wanted to lift annual sales by a million.

The announcement last week included an admission by CEO Makoto Uchida that the mid-term plan it succeeded, called Nissan Next, had a flaw.

The goal of increasing volumes used to be staple of car makers’ forward-looking plans, but in recent years it has become unfashionable, replaced instead by the now well-worn phrase ‘value over volume’.

That mindset preferred sales quality over quantity, removing discounting in favour of selling better-equipped models for higher prices.