Honda Nissan Merger

red one

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Should we be concerned? I heard on the news they are in talks due to financial conditions. I guess they still will make bikes but maybe they will do some cutting. Btw I think the FJR1300 and Kawasaki Concours are now gone as I see no 2025's on the websites. Came as a shock to me as I always thought Honda was strong...well at least as strong as Toyota. Nissan yeah they have been sucking wind for quite a while. What say you?
 
red one said:
Should we be concerned? I heard on the news they are in talks due to financial conditions. I guess they still will make bikes but maybe they will do some cutting. Btw I think the FJR1300 and Kawasaki Concours are now gone as I see no 2025's on the websites. Came as a shock to me as I always thought Honda was strong...well at least as strong as Toyota. Nissan yeah they have been sucking wind for quite a while. What say you?
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I'm thinking with all the hype on EVs and how the auto manufactures were investing heavily into them, and now it seems that they are not selling, I think most of the auto manufactures are hurting! Which what happens when our government mandates and gets involved with things like this!
 
I believe it will be more likely a collaboration, a type of joint venture, to produce technologies for EVs with both companies currently far behind Chinese companies. As US citizens we view our market as the only one that is important and it is important but the global market is far bigger than North America and the very well received lower priced Chinese EVs hold a commanding share of it. Tesla is only a bit player outside of the US.

IMO this won't be a merger in the conventional sense of two companies becoming one. Lots of precedent for joint ventures between automakers. Toyota and GM did a 30 year joint venture known as NUMMI, Ford owned as much as 33% of Mazda between in 70s/80s/90s/2000s, and most recently Toyota and Mazda collaborated to transfer hybrid technologies to the latter.

Nothing is for sure here. Nissan has very little to offer Honda and a lot has to happen in Japan and France before a large scale merger could take place. Japanese companies answer to their government for major changes and Nissan is in waist deep with Renault with the French government heavily invested.
 
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red one said:
Should we be concerned? I heard on the news they are in talks due to financial conditions. I guess they still will make bikes but maybe they will do some cutting. Btw I think the FJR1300 and Kawasaki Concours are now gone as I see no 2025's on the websites. Came as a shock to me as I always thought Honda was strong...well at least as strong as Toyota. Nissan yeah they have been sucking wind for quite a while. What say you?
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Noooooo!!!
 
My Brother told me about this a while ago after speaking with a Nissan Canada executive. My Brother works for a Nissan dealer. This guy framed it as Honda was considering buying Nissan, but who knows how high up the food chain he is. He also told my Brother that Toyota was making a deal with Nissan to use their CVT technology in Toyotas, including the Tacomas. Not sure how good of an idea that is if the fact that everyone who works at that Nissan dealer hates the Nissan CVT transmissions counts for anything.
 
Andrew Shadow said:
My Brother told me about this a while ago after speaking with a Nissan Canada executive. My Brother works for a Nissan dealer. This guy framed it as Honda was considering buying Nissan, but who knows how high up the food chain he is. He also told my Brother that Toyota was making a deal with Nissan to use their CVT technology in Toyotas, including the Tacomas. Not sure how good of an idea that is if the fact that everyone who works at that Nissan dealer hates the Nissan CVT transmissions counts for anything.
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Articles I've read talk about collaboration vs merger. Frankly, I'm not certain what Nissan has to offer Honda.

As examples of collaboration between manufacturers, Toyota and Subaru collaborate with the mechanicals on the BRZ and the 86. Toyota and BMW do the same with the GR Supra. I'm sure there are other examples out there.

Re the Honda using Nissan CVT tech I've heard nothing but terrible things about their reliability, not certain what Nissan has there that Toyota would want..
 
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Nissan does have products in the pickup and commercial vehicle segments that Honda doesn’t.
 
dduelin said:
Toyota and GM did a 30 year joint venture known as NUMMI, ......
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I remember that venture well because of one car in particular- the Chevrolet Nova released as part of that venture.
I was a mechanic at a large GM dealership during that time. Under this venture with Toyota in North America GM released what was a rebadged Toyota Corolla as the Chevrolet Nova during that period. Besides the badges and nameplates this Nova had a GM AC Delco battery and a GM AC Delco radio in it. Everything else was Toyota. This car was a perfect example of the media bias against North American built vehicles at the time. Whether North American built vehicles were of lesser quality or not is certainly a valid claim, but even when there was a North American vehicle that was of on par with anything from Japan it seemed as though they were incapable of admitting it during this time period. They claimed to be providing unbiased, honest, and factual assessments of each vehicle that they reviewed for the benefit of their readers and the consumers. Their differing opinions of these two vehicles brought that claim in to question in my mind.

These cars were often coming in to the shop for one problem or the other, and there were many service bulletins issued in support of them. One good thing is that Toyota parts, service bulletins, and shop manuals could be used in a pinch. All of these things were the same as it was a Corolla. Toyota would often have service bulletins, parts for recalls, manual updates, etc., before we would receive them from GM. If we were really stuck we would go down the street to the Toyota dealer for the parts or technical information that we needed.

Despite them being the same vehicle, North American Corollas were even being made on the same assembly line as the Nova, I remember how the automobile media would sing the praises of the Toyota Corolla while at the same time criticize the Chevrolet Nova as yet another example of North American inferiority in the small car market. It seemed disingenuous at least if not outright dishonest. It was not a secret to anyone that the Nova and the Corolla were one in the same vehicle. It was impossible to believe that they did not know this as well.
 
All ‘automobile media’ dissing the Nova is a broad categorization IMO. In the mid 80s Japanese brands were ascendant and it was hard to find any entity, public or private, that had anything good to say about domestic automakers and they made it easy for their critics with the products they rushed to market after the OPEC embargos turned consumers onto small cars. Detroit led with their chin.

I had a friend with a 1985 NUMMI Nova while I was selling Honda/Acuras in 1986 and 87. Immersed in product and industry knowledge I remember reading industry news about Fremont CA joint production venture problems. Looking back now it’s easy to forget that early Toyota/GM cars coming out of Fremont were among the worst quality produced by GM and labor problems there were very very bad. That’s saying something for the time. Until GM management relented and allowed Toyota to bring in the Japanese mentality of 50/50 partners management style instead of “us against them” did the NUMMI product quality improve and improve it did and quite quickly. GM had no choice given Toyota was threatening to pull out of the venture due to quality non conformance and GM had no alternative car to offer.

Concurrently Honda was producing Accords in both Marysville, OH and Japan and there was a strong bias against Ohio produced Accords despite them not having Toyota’s US labor problems. Some buyers, my dad included, would not accept a Marysville car. Instead they joined the waiting list for an imported one.

www.lean.org

How NUMMI Changed Its Culture - Lean Enterprise Institute

I received a lot of questions on-line and off about last week’s column on the pending closing of NUMMI. One question in particular came up a lot: “What did you really do to change the culture at NUMMI so dramatically so quickly?” It’s one thing to say at a high level, “We instituted the Toyota...
www.lean.org www.lean.org
 
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Andrew Shadow said:
I remember that venture well because of one car in particular- the Chevrolet Nova released as part of that venture.
I was a mechanic at a large GM dealership during that time. Under this venture with Toyota in North America GM released what was a rebadged Toyota Corolla as the Chevrolet Nova during that period. Besides the badges and nameplates this Nova had a GM AC Delco battery and a GM AC Delco radio in it. Everything else was Toyota. This car was a perfect example of the media bias against North American built vehicles at the time. Whether North American built vehicles were of lesser quality or not is certainly a valid claim, but even when there was a North American vehicle that was of on par with anything from Japan it seemed as though they were incapable of admitting it during this time period. They claimed to be providing unbiased, honest, and factual assessments of each vehicle that they reviewed for the benefit of their readers and the consumers. Their differing opinions of these two vehicles brought that claim in to question in my mind.

These cars were often coming in to the shop for one problem or the other, and there were many service bulletins issued in support of them. One good thing is that Toyota parts, service bulletins, and shop manuals could be used in a pinch. All of these things were the same as it was a Corolla. Toyota would often have service bulletins, parts for recalls, manual updates, etc., before we would receive them from GM. If we were really stuck we would go down the street to the Toyota dealer for the parts or technical information that we needed.

Despite them being the same vehicle, North American Corollas were even being made on the same assembly line as the Nova, I remember how the automobile media would sing the praises of the Toyota Corolla while at the same time criticize the Chevrolet Nova as yet another example of North American inferiority in the small car market. It seemed disingenuous at least if not outright dishonest. It was not a secret to anyone that the Nova and the Corolla were one in the same vehicle. It was impossible to believe that they did not know this as well.
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My current car a 2005 Corolla sits at 260K miles and was made in California at the NUMMI plant. Best car I have ever owned. And I have owned alot of cars. Asians were the best and the domestics were junk.
 
I read something a few weeks ago talking about Nissan being in serious trouble. The writer stated Nissan would probably be "belly Up" in 12 to 18 months. I just skimmed the article and didn't pay much attention to it. I cannot find it now. I think I saw the link originally on X (Twitter). Don't know how accurate the article was but the timing seems interesting.

I don't believe this was the exact article but it mentions Nissan's financial trouble. Interesting article.
 
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dduelin said:
Looking back now it’s easy to forget that early Toyota/GM cars coming out of Fremont were among the worst quality produced by GM and labor problems there were very very bad. That’s saying something for the time. Until GM management relented and allowed Toyota to bring in the Japanese mentality of 50/50 partners management style instead of “us against them” did the NUMMI product quality improve and improve it did and quite quickly. GM had no choice given Toyota was threatening to pull out of the venture due to quality non conformance and GM had no alternative car to offer.
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The GM/Toyota venture that was NUMMI never produced cars under the old GM management system in place in Fremont that yielded the worst quality in GM's system. The plant had been closed and was reopened for this venture and operated using the Toyota manufacturing philosophy right from the beginning as far as I recall.
 
Andrew Shadow said:
It is, and is why I never wrote all.
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"This car was a perfect example of the media bias against North American built vehicles at the time." The implication however is clear.

Go back and read that linked article to refresh your recall.
 
I was [and remain] a big fan of the chevy Nova, it shares no platform with all of the other GM cars [that didn't go anywhere] and is a unibody with a forward subframe similar to what dodge / chrylser had already embraced earlier. It was a great time when all of the manufacturers were exploring light weight stamped steel components coupled with ideas that deviated from conventional solid frames. The 68 charger is a perfect example of the unibody light weight all steel reasonable rigid chassis

... and it made a great movie...
 
dduelin said:
"This car was a perfect example of the media bias against North American built vehicles at the time." The implication however is clear.
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I think that this is a good example of that bias, and that is all that I wrote, and that is the entirety of my point. Whether a bias exists or not is not dependant on the degree to which it exists, and therefore is not salient to that point. I don't believe that I expressed any measure of how wide-spread that bias was or was not, and did not intend to, and any assumptions being made belong to those making them.
dduelin said:
Go back and read that linked article to refresh your recall.
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It states the same thing. It closed and remained closed for over and year and all of the GM employees had been laid off. It reopened as a NUMMI plant and rehired most of the same workforce but was operated using the Toyota TPS system. No NUMMI vehicles were manufactured under the old managerial system that was in place when it was a GM plant.
 
red one said:
My current car a 2005 Corolla sits at 260K miles and was made in California at the NUMMI plant. Best car I have ever owned. And I have owned alot of cars. Asians were the best and the domestics were junk.
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That may well have been true in 2005. Another data point is I had a 1972 Corolla and it was one of the worst cars that I have ever had. I don't see the relevance to either of those points.

During the time period of when the Toyota Corolla and the Chevrolet Nova were both being produced in the same plant under the NUMMI name these two vehicles were both identical cars in every and any way that matters. They were both Toyota Corollas. To state that the Corolla is excellent and that the Nova is junk in that particular scenario can only be viewed as hypocritical. Either they were both excellent vehicles or they were both junk, but it could not be one of each. That is the entirety of my point.
 
Chris09 said:
I was [and remain] a big fan of the chevy Nova, it shares no platform with all of the other GM cars [that didn't go anywhere] and is a unibody with a forward subframe similar to what dodge / chrylser had already embraced earlier. It was a great time when all of the manufacturers were exploring light weight stamped steel components coupled with ideas that deviated from conventional solid frames. The 68 charger is a perfect example of the unibody light weight all steel reasonable rigid chassis
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The Nova that you remember so well I suspect is not the version that we are referring to here. It was no muscle-car era Nova.

1734673660691.jpeg
 
Andrew Shadow said:
That may well have been true in 2005. Another data point is I had a 1972 Corolla and it was one of the worst cars that I have ever had. I don't see the relevance to either of those points.

During the time period of when the Toyota Corolla and the Chevrolet Nova were both being produced in the same plant under the NUMMI name these two vehicles were both identical cars in every and any way that matters. They were both Toyota Corollas. To state that the Corolla is excellent and that the Nova is junk in that particular scenario can only be viewed as hypocritical. Either they were both excellent vehicles or they were both junk, but it could not be one of each. That is the entirety of my point.
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I may be mistaken but the Nummi plant in 2005 Only produced Toyota cars not GM Nova's. As far as Toyota vehicles produced there go on the Toyota Websites and you will see plenty built that have over 500K miles on them. Btw you do know Toyota Lexus cars have been #1 for decades.
 
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