NISSAN: Trucks star at Nissan brand, Infiniti

Record November sales of light trucks gave the Nissan brand an 8 percent boost for the month. The same market trend lifted the Infiniti brand 3.6 percent, compared with a year earlier.

Nissan posted 103,024 car and light-truck sales, also a record for the month, with Rogue and Titan pickup volumes making significant gains. Infiniti reported 12,112 sales thanks to its QX30 and QX50 crossovers.

Rogue sales rose 18 percent to 26,629, also a November record. Titan sales rose 363 percent to 3,329 as the automaker slowly brings volume-oriented models of the truck to market.

Nissan also saw big increases from its full-size Armada SUV, which rose 114 percent to 1,738 sales for the month, and from its Murano crossover, which set a November record, rising 36 percent to 7,589 sales.

“It was an incredible month for us in trucks and crossovers,” said Judy Wheeler, Nissan Division vice president for U.S. sales. “And it was a great Black Friday for the industry. The consumers were really  shopping.”

She said that Nissan’s “Star Wars” movie-related advertising in the second half of November helped drive showroom traffic and online shopping.

Cars on decline

Conversely, there were scant bright spots on the car side of the ledger for Nissan.

The Maxima rose 5.4 percent to 4,093 sales. But Nissan’s three volume cars -- the Altima, Sentra and Versa -- all declined in the month.

Altima volume fell 2.6 percent to 20,039, the Sentra was down 3.3 percent to 14,028, and the Versa declined 19 percent to 7,930 sales.

Wheeler said that while Versa nameplate sales were down, the Versa sedan actually increased slightly. The hatchback Versa Note declined and offset the sedan.

Michelle Krebs, senior analyst for Autotrader, said rising light-truck sales “are boosting Nissan’s average transaction prices, which help offset hefty incentives.”

Kelley Blue Book reported that the average transaction price for vehicles rose 3.4 percent to $28,796 in November, compared with November 2015.

Wheeler agreed that industry incentive spends have been at record levels for the past three months, but she said Nissan’s November incentives were “substantially lower” than industry averages.

She also noted that a larger portion of the brand’s available inventory is still comprised of 2016 model-year vehicles than the industry as a whole. She offered data that the industry as a whole now has 49 percent of its inventory in 2017 model year, while Nissan’s is just 23 percent.