Infiniti, Murano Production Cut by Nissan

Most news reports which came out in the last few days were somehow related to the global economic crisis, regardless if they announced job cuts, lowered productions or other markets moves meant to minimize loses. Unfortunately, a similar report came out today informing that the third largest Japanese car manufacturer decided to cut production of two factories due to the decreasing demand of vehicles in the United States, obviously caused by the global economic crisis.

The Detroit News today wrote that Infiniti, Murano and Rogue are the three models to be affected by the decision, more and more customers becoming interested in low-cost cars with lower fuel consumption. Since petrol prices exploded a few weeks ago, Americans started looking for less-powerful cars with smaller engines, usually produced by European companies. The 3.5 V6 version of the 2008 Nissan Murano has an average quoted city fuel consumption of 13.1 liter per 100 km while some European models could sometime provide a 5.5-6 l/100km fuel consumption.

Getting back to today's news, Nissan has been going through some dark times in the last few months, with sales on the North American market dropping about 37 percent. However, the full-time production will be restarted in March 2009 for the all three models mentioned above.

“Ikue Matsuura, a spokeswoman for Japan's third-largest automaker, said Tuesday the company will slash output of its Infiniti luxury models and Murano and Rogue sport utility vehicles at its two domestic plants from November through March,” Detroit News informed.

Similar decisions were announced by many other car and motorcycle manufactures around the world, all of them being imposed by the financial crisis. The best example is given by the three motorcycle giants Yamaha, Suzuki and Honda, who have already announced that motorcycle production will be reduced in the upcoming year due to the continuously decreasing demand on several European and North American markets.