Nissan’s profit zoomed up more than 10-fold in July-September from a year earlier, boosted by a weak Japanese yen and strong vehicle sales around the world. The Japanese automaker, allied with Renault SA of France, reported a 190.7 billion yen ($1.3 billion) profit in the last quarter, up from 17.4 billion yen the year before. Quarterly sales surged 25% to 3.15 trillion yen ($20.9 billion), the company said Thursday.
Not surprised.
Nissan dealers were the only Asian automakers not putting massive markups on their vehicles when I was shopping a year back. I also never thought I would ever buy a Nissan, but after going to dealer after dealer and being told of markups on all the hybrids, I checked out a Nissan Rogue on a whim since they advertised 37mpg highway from a fancy variable compression turbo engine and ended up picking up a base model for $500 under MSRP. Been quite happy with it for commuting/family hauling, and have been recommending it to others.
Mitsubishi has also now joined that Renault/Nissan alliance, and while I hadn’t seen a Mitsubishi product in decades I felt was worth a damn, the PHEV Outlander also would have been a strong contender had it qualified for the PHEV rebates in the states.