Nis­san’s op­er­a­tions in the Trinidad and To­ba­go mar­ket are not like­ly to be af­fect­ed in the near fu­ture, de­spite an an­nounce­ment that the Japan­ese au­tomak­er is set to merge with an­oth­er Japan­ese au­to­mo­tive gi­ant Hon­da.

The planned merg­er was born of chal­lenges faced by Nis­san, the third largest Japan­ese au­to­mo­bile com­pa­ny by vol­ume, as it is strug­gling in mul­ti­ple re­gions around the world, par­tic­u­lar­ly the US and Chi­na while al­so los­ing ground in oth­er mar­kets.

How­ev­er, Massy Mo­tors se­nior vice-pres­i­dent, Jean-Pierre du Coudray, said rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the com­pa­ny vis­it­ed a cou­ple weeks ago to give the lo­cal fran­chise hold­ers an up­date on the sit­u­a­tion.

“What we have been told is that they don’t fore­see any is­sues with the nor­mal op­er­a­tions. This is a very strate­gic, long-term de­ci­sion that’s been looked at. But at least for the next three years, we have been ad­vised that this is busi­ness as usu­al. We have been re­ceiv­ing ve­hi­cles. We have been or­der­ing ve­hi­cles. They have new line­ups come in. So from an op­er­a­tional stand­point, we have not seen and we’ve been told not to ex­pect any ma­jor change what­so­ev­er,” du Coudray told the Busi­ness Guardian.

Du Coudray said he would like­ly learn more about the fu­ture of Nis­san in a con­fer­ence set to be held in Mex­i­co in next month.

Nis­san has con­sis­tent­ly been one of the top-sell­ing brands in T&T, with du Coudray con­firm­ing it re­mained a top brand on the lo­cal mar­ket. In­ter­na­tion­al­ly, much of Nis­san’s mar­ket share had been erod­ed by greater ac­cep­tance of Chi­nese brands.

The Chi­nese in­flu­ence has al­so come in­to T&T’s new car mar­ket, as well, with Great Wall Mo­tors and BYD open­ing show­rooms in the coun­try in the past 18 months.

Massy Mo­tors al­so has a con­nec­tion to the Chi­nese mar­ket through its dis­tri­b­u­tion deal with Mor­ris Garages (MG), which was in­tro­duced to the T&T mar­ket in 2022. While the brand was orig­i­nal­ly British, SA­IC Mo­tor, a Chi­nese state-owned au­tomak­er, took con­trol of the MG brand in 2007.

Last June, Massy Mo­tors was award­ed the re­gion­al con­tract as the MG dis­trib­u­tor for the south­ern Caribbean – An­tigua, Bar­ba­dos, Do­mini­ca, Grena­da, St Lu­cia, St Kitts, St Vin­cent and St Mar­tin.

At the cer­e­mo­ni­al sign­ing of that deal, it was con­firmed that MG was in the top five of new car brand sales in T&T.

Du Coudray, how­ev­er, said the grow­ing pres­ence of Chi­nese brands had not shift­ed Nis­san from its stand­ing in this coun­try.

“Yes, the Chi­nese brands, not just in Trinidad but glob­al­ly, have seen a lot of mar­ket share in the last three to five years. And you may see oth­er brands, like Nis­san and Mit­subishi, prob­a­bly would be the brands that have been most im­pact­ed by the Chi­nese brands. And you might see oth­er al­liances hap­pen­ing to en­sure sur­vival. That’s just the re­al­i­ty of the busi­ness,” said Du Coudray.

“In Trinidad, we don’t have many Chi­nese brands that have re­al­ly es­tab­lished them­selves. Luck­i­ly for us, we were the first to bring in a Chi­nese brand in the form of MG. It’s per­formed very well for us, and it’s do­ing very well. But to be hon­est, it doesn’t re­al­ly com­pete with Nis­san. It’s a dif­fer­ent price point. It’s a dif­fer­ent line­up. So it has not had any im­pact on our Nis­san sales, and it’s prob­a­bly tak­en more sales away from our com­peti­tors.”

Du Coudray said there are oth­er Chi­nese brands that have en­tered the mar­ket re­cent­ly.

“I know BYD is here. I know HAVAL has come in un­der the Great Wall um­brel­la, but I don’t think ei­ther of those brands has the vol­ume to re­al­ly im­pact the tra­di­tion­al brands. But, you know, it’s good to have op­tions for the cus­tomers,” he said.

Pres­i­dent of the Au­to­mo­tive Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T, Ryan Latchu sim­i­lar­ly felt there had not been a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on the mar­ket by Chi­nese brands just yet.

He shared a sum­ma­ry of the lo­cal mar­ket for 2024 with the Busi­ness Guardian which un­der­lined this point.

The re­port stat­ed, “The mar­ket saw the in­tro­duc­tion of sev­er­al in­ter­na­tion­al au­to­mo­tive brands, par­tic­u­lar­ly from Chi­na and Malaysia, aim­ing to cap­ture the at­ten­tion of lo­cal con­sumers.

“Tra­di­tion­al au­to­mo­tive brands con­tin­ued to op­er­ate in the mar­ket; how­ev­er, the en­try of new play­ers like BYD and Pro­ton sug­gests a di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of con­sumer choic­es. Even though there was a drop in Chi­nese mar­ket share lo­cal­ly (down from 9.6 per cent to 7 per cent) ad­di­tion­al Chi­nese au­to­mo­tive brands en­tered the mar­ket in 2024.

“Build Your Dreams (BYD) in­tro­duced its elec­tric ve­hi­cles along with sales and ser­vice fa­cil­i­ties. This move aligns with BYD’s broad­er strat­e­gy to ex­pand its pres­ence in the Caribbean re­gion. Pro­ton al­so en­tered the mar­ket. The Malaysian au­tomak­er, with Chi­nese part­ner­ships, launched mod­els like the X50 and X90 SU­Vs.”

But it al­so con­firmed that Nis­san, so com­mon­ly among the most sought-af­ter car brands in the coun­try, was not in the top three of new car sales in 2024.

The re­port stat­ed, “At the close of the 2024 cal­en­dar year, the top three brands in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s au­to­mo­tive mar­ket, ranked by mar­ket share, were: Toy­ota (17 per cen), Kia (14 per cent), and Hyundai (10.9 per cent).”

The re­port, how­ev­er, backed du Coudray’s state­ment that Nis­san still re­mained the most sought af­ter ve­hi­cle in the pick­up mar­ket as the sum­ma­ry said, “The pick­up seg­ment re­mained rel­a­tive­ly flat with 21.8 per cent in 2024 ver­sus 21.6 per cnt in 2023. There was a no­table shift to 4x2 (11.6 per cent in 2023 to 19 per cent in 2024) from 4x4 (88.4 per cent in 2023 to 81 per cent in 2024). Lead­ing the 4x2 seg­ment was Nis­san with 11.2 per cent while Toy­ota is lead­ing the 4x4 seg­ment with 27.5 per cent.”

The re­port al­so stat­ed there “was a mod­er­ate in­crease in an­nu­al au­to­mo­tive sales, with an over­all rise of 7.6 per cent in 2024 com­pared to 2023.”

The sum­ma­ry stat­ed, “This marks an in­crease of 876 units sold in 2024. By seg­ment, the most no­table in­crease was ob­served in the small SUV seg­ment, with an in­crease of 6.1 per cent in sales for 2024 (21.1 per cent in 2023 to 27.2 per cent in 2024).”

The sum­ma­ry con­tin­ued, “In this seg­ment, hold­ing the largest mar­ket share was Toy­ota Yaris Cross, which saw a dras­tic jump in sales from 6.4 per cent in 2023 to 18.6 per cent in 2024, fol­lowed by the Kia Sel­tos which in­creased from 10.9 per cent to 11.9 per cent from the pre­vi­ous year. Con­verse­ly, the mid-SUV and mi­ni-SUV seg­ments saw a de­cline, with a 4.5 per cent de­crease in mid-SUV sales and 1.1 per cent de­crease in mi­ni-SUV for 2024. “

The re­port al­so con­firmed con­tin­ued growth in de­mand for elec­tric ve­hi­cles, as it stat­ed, “The EV mar­ket in Trinidad and To­ba­go gained mo­men­tum in 2024, in­creas­ing from 1.7 per cent to 2.9 per cent, due to sev­er­al no­table fac­tors, in­clud­ing but not lim­it­ed to con­sumer in­ter­est and sus­tain­abil­i­ty. There was an in­creas­ing in­cli­na­tion to­wards ve­hi­cles equipped with mod­ern tech­nolo­gies, in­clud­ing hy­brids (from 4.4 per cent to 10.3 per cent) and mild hy­brids (from 3.7 per cent to 5.8 per cent), re­flect­ing a shift in con­sumer pref­er­ences to­wards more en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly op­tions.”

For the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary to June 2024, the Cen­tral Bank’s Sum­ma­ry Eco­nom­ic In­di­ca­tors, re­port­ed that new ve­hi­cle sales in­creased by 18.2to 6,306, while the num­ber of ve­hi­cles reg­is­tered rose by 22 per cent to 11,066.