The Nissan Cube - woeful UK sales
Nissan are nursing dismal sales for the Nissan Cube in Europe despite stunning sales in Japan. But that’s because they’ve not allowed for cultural differences.
Let’s start with the good news for Nissan and the Nissan Cube – it’s a big success in Japan, having sold more than a million in the last decade. It offers the Japanese a practical way of moving around and has tapped in to Japanese sensibilities on practicality, form and function.
Buoyed by that success Nissan has tried to make Europe fall in love with the Cube, and failed miserably. Latest figures show that there have been under 700 sales in the UK so far this year (around a third of Nissan’s target) with similarly poor figures in other European countries. Italy, for example, has racked up just 250 sales this year and Holland a paltry 100.
And the paltry sales aren’t for the want of trying. Take a quick look round Nissan dealers in the UK and you can see some big discounts going on, with a Nissan dealer group in Lincolnshire offering £4.5k off. That’s a 30% discount. Still the buggers don’t sell.
The problem for Nissan is that they don’t seem to have realised the difference between the average European buyer and the average Japanese. Japan has no real car history; for them the car is a product to be refined and tweaked to give the best solution to any given transport problem. Which is why Japanese cars are, on the whole, beautifully put together and fulfil the needs of the buyer to perfection. They just have no ‘Soul’.
Which works brilliantly if you buy a car with your head and are looking for transport. But European buyers don’t just buy with their heads, they buy with their hearts too. And buying a car like the Cube, despite all it’s practicalities, clever touches and ‘sensibleness’ just isn’t enough for the European buyer when it looks like a cross between a special needs car and Postman Pat’s van.
Make it funky-different and Europe will get it. Case in point is the brilliant Nissan Juke. Make it look like a car designed for Andy and Lou and you’re bolloxed.
Certainly in Europe.
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