Photo: Kleber Silva on Behance
Before anything, it must be highlighted that Nissan doesn’t have too many trucks to offer. The NT100 Clipper and the Atlas lineup are available in Japan, the U.S. has the Frontier and Titan, and the rest of the world relies on the Navara. The question is, can Nissan make a case for a unibody truck the size of the Kicks?
Ideally, the answer would be yes. Hyundai, Volkswagen, and even Ford are working on small pickups based on car platforms. But on the other hand, Nissan is strapped for cash right now over a handful of obvious reasons.
First and foremost, the Carlos Ghosn fiasco took its toll on the company’s capitalization. Secondly, the automaker has recently posted its first net loss in 11 years (670 billion yen or 6.2 billion U.S. dollars). Last, but certainly not least, Nissan is hard at work on redesigning outgoing models and introducing all-new vehicles such as the Ariya electric crossover and the 400Z sports car.
Whichever way you look at it, the “Kicks Pickup” imagined by pixel artist Kleber Silva is nothing more than wishful thinking even though it would sell by the dozens in many markets. Hyundai, for example, describes the soon-to-be-revealed Santa Cruz as half truck and half crossover in a bid to attract potential customers that would otherwise be interested exclusively in compact utility vehicles.
Suppose the Kicks pickup does happen. Given the subcompact classification of the real thing and the wheelbase of the rendering, Nissan would have to make some serious modifications to the platform in order to combine the five-seat cabin with a cargo area. The Rogue Sport or Rogue would be better choices in this regard thanks to the modularity of the Common Module Family vehicle architecture.
While on the subject of trucks, have you heard the NV200 and heavy-duty NV series will leave the U.S. market to streamline operations? Hoisting the white flag doesn’t come as a surprise, not at a time when cost-cutting is so important to the Japanese automaker’s survival. The only foreign brand selling commercial vans in the U.S. besides Nissan is Mercedes-Benz, but the Big Three in Detroit dominate the segment. Ford, for example, has over 50 percent of the market.
First and foremost, the Carlos Ghosn fiasco took its toll on the company’s capitalization. Secondly, the automaker has recently posted its first net loss in 11 years (670 billion yen or 6.2 billion U.S. dollars). Last, but certainly not least, Nissan is hard at work on redesigning outgoing models and introducing all-new vehicles such as the Ariya electric crossover and the 400Z sports car.
Whichever way you look at it, the “Kicks Pickup” imagined by pixel artist Kleber Silva is nothing more than wishful thinking even though it would sell by the dozens in many markets. Hyundai, for example, describes the soon-to-be-revealed Santa Cruz as half truck and half crossover in a bid to attract potential customers that would otherwise be interested exclusively in compact utility vehicles.
Suppose the Kicks pickup does happen. Given the subcompact classification of the real thing and the wheelbase of the rendering, Nissan would have to make some serious modifications to the platform in order to combine the five-seat cabin with a cargo area. The Rogue Sport or Rogue would be better choices in this regard thanks to the modularity of the Common Module Family vehicle architecture.
While on the subject of trucks, have you heard the NV200 and heavy-duty NV series will leave the U.S. market to streamline operations? Hoisting the white flag doesn’t come as a surprise, not at a time when cost-cutting is so important to the Japanese automaker’s survival. The only foreign brand selling commercial vans in the U.S. besides Nissan is Mercedes-Benz, but the Big Three in Detroit dominate the segment. Ford, for example, has over 50 percent of the market.
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