{"id":553508,"date":"2026-03-20T20:18:15","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T20:18:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/553508\/"},"modified":"2026-03-20T20:18:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T20:18:15","slug":"nissan-australia-boss-says-we-have-the-most-competitive-new-car-market-in-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/553508\/","title":{"rendered":"Nissan Australia boss says we have the most competitive new-car market in the world"},"content":{"rendered":"

For such a large country in terms of land mass, Australia doesn\u2019t have a whole lot of people \u2013 and nor do many buy cars.<\/p>\n

In 2025, 1.2 million new vehicles were delivered in Australia, a new record for the nation, though it pales in comparison to the 2 million new registrations in the UK, and 16.3 million deliveries in the US.<\/p>\n

Despite being such a relatively small market, Australia has among the highest number of brands with around 60 currently operating locally, and even more to come.<\/p>\n

To top it off, Toyota alone accounts for approximately 20 per cent of sales in the market, while the top 10 brands combined share almost 70 per cent of all deliveries.<\/p>\n

\"\"Nissan X-Trail e-Power<\/p>\n

Speaking to Torquecafe, Andrew Humberstone \u2013 who is about to vacate his role as Nissan Oceania managing director after two years \u2013 said Australia is undoubtedly the most competitive market in the automotive world.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe next big thing is what takes time is the product portfolio, because the mid-term plan is five years, and we were looking beyond that and saying \u2018how do we read the market?\u2019,\u201d Humberstone said, referring to Nissan\u2019s Oceanian rejuvenation strategy.<\/p>\n

\u201cEspecially here, [the] most competitive market in the world, I don\u2019t even debate that anymore. I state that as a fact.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo many products, so much fluidity. To be a survivor in this market, you have to be agile and you have to have the right product portfolio, and know who your competitors are.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s going to be a lot of change between that top six, that top 15 that are doing 900,000 [deliveries a year] and the balance doing 300,000 [deliveries a year]. There\u2019s going to be a lot of migration and movement.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there\u2019ll be winners and losers for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2025, Nissan dropped out of the top 10 best-selling car brands in Australia, slipping to 12th overall after deliveries fell by 21.6 per cent to 35,511 for the year. In the first two months of 2026, it has fallen further to 15th place with year-on-year deliveries down 44.7 per cent.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not alone and certainly won\u2019t be in the long term, especially as more brands from China arrive in Australia and roll out a wide range of products. Even last year, the newly arrived BYD Shark 6 out-sold Nissan\u2019s X-Trail SUV, with no Nissan model finishing in the top 20 sales race.<\/p>\n

Nissan is also cutting down its product lineup in Australia, this week axing the Juke and Pathfinder while delaying the next-generation Leaf.<\/p>\n

It has said it wants to add a front-wheel drive hybrid X-Trail to the mix though, while the Navara is soon rolling out into showrooms, albeit now as a rebadged Mitsubishi Triton \u2013 only going on sale in Australia and New Zealand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For such a large country in terms of land mass, Australia doesn\u2019t have a whole lot of people…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":553509,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-553508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=553508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553508\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/553509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=553508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=553508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=553508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}