[naveen.raju]

This was expected and I guess Nissan will soon follow.

When we were looking out for the second, we did TD the Redigo and it was so cheap. Exterior was cute which was why my wife wanted to see the car, but even she was disappointed with the quality.

Manufacturers here do have this notion of trying to compromise on quality and bet on the Indian market. Datsun used to have some solid cars. I remember that my dad was so impressed with one when we were in the Middle East that he decided to import it to India after paying a huge import fee. We used for couple of years after which we sold it (I was too small to even remember the car though).

[Emvi]

GO + GO Plus + Redi-GO = GOner!
It was just a matter of time.

After two meh products, GO and GO Plus, Datsun Redi-GO concept looked stunning and probably had all the right ingredients to succeed. Datsun lost the plot again all thanks to illogical cost cutting and production version of Redi-GO turned out to be MEH again!

https://youtu.be/3sYgDH0zZKY

[amol4184]

Is it just me or anyone else here is surprised by the fact that this brand existed in India for almost a decade?? Living in small-ish town which I think was the target customer base for this brand I have seen about 3 Datsuns in last two years.

Datsun's India operations have now ended after barely a nine-year stint

[Tgo]

My thoughts on end of Duster’s production:

Originally Posted by Tgo

As an owner of two Dusters, I have though a lot about what led to this. It seems to hold true for the Nissan brand too, which is a part of the Renault-Nissan Alliance.

Their strategy for India was promising, and began with premium offerings (Teana, X-Trail, Koleos, Fluence) establishing the brands and their credentials with a plan to bring in more affordable products for the mass market. Sunny, Micra, and Evalia under the Nissan brand followed by the Duster under the Renault brand. This was the second phase which was short lived but the products had their unique identities.

They probably had slower roll-out of their product release strategy. There were competitors working on products which were in tune to the market demand. We had the Verna, Vento, Creta, Ecosport which brought in a whole new perspective for a regular car buyer. Not only were these products new, they opened up new segments, brought in incredible features and aspirational value. Kudos to these guys for the effort they put into developing these products.

The alliance probably realized it late that the products they chose for India, might have been low cost in the markets they existed in globally... probably easy to pull off in India. These models were all end of life products which never were considered for an update strategy hence they never saw features that enabled them to compete. I also suspect, they shifted production of these end of life products to India and never achieved a production run required to break even. Since production was shifted as-is from other countries, these products never had the level of localization required to price spares competitively.

It was around this time they thought of revamping their strategy for India and decided to develop fresh low-cost models which have no legacy and point of comparison with the global market. In my opinion this was a great plan which eventually worked out but it also gave rise to so many changes which questioned the brand's commitment and direction.

A great article which leads into the next one I share.



This article did the rounds after the Kwid and RediGo were a success, but it is mostly here, where it fits into the timeline. It also shows the core values the alliance had to work on building for its plan for India. An exercise which shows promising results and is going to stick around and influence the products and the market segment they target for the future.



Now comes the futile effort phase.

Since new products do not come up overnight while they were working on it secretly, they were struggling to stay relevant.

• Sunny, Micra and Duster were rebadged to Scala, Pulse and Terrano confusing the customers and the respective brand's unique identifiers.
• X-Trail, Fluence, Koleos which had established the image of these brands were axed rather abruptly.
• Evalia was licensed off to Ashok Leyland to test the waters. More to figure out whether royalty earrings from licensing out a platform could work out.
• Now they needed a sacrificial goat to gauge the reception of their low-cost product strategy. They revive the Datsun brand (specifically for India and only for this purpose) with one model Go, its impractical 7 seater the Go+.
• Captur was an experiment to lure-in the customer through glamorizing the product which failed miserably due to misleading marketing that Team-BHP caught onto. Kicks held on mostly due to being placed in the less popular brand and therefore out of visibility. Both were fundamentally, the Duster, for people who thought the Duster was old.
• BS6 norms became the pretext under which they could justify their move towards petrol-only powertrains. Their newer offerings were never designed to take in a diesel engine so they found it better to axe the single model which needed it.
• 5th, 6th & 7th year warranties were launched around that time. The Duster had a brief run with Petrol only lineup and the Zoe was showcased somewhere only to establish prudence.

To conclude: The Duster clicked initially but survived only to prove Renault's long term commitment to its customers and market the newer offerings (Kwid, Triber and Magnite) to customers who had valid reasons to keep away.

Attachment 2273621

I sincerely hope that the people who owned it, used it to its full potential, loved it for its strengths, made some great memories and move on... The Duster doesn't seem to be coming back anytime soon.

Disclaimer: This is an independent opinion based on un-verified facts.

It seems, Datsun in India was launched only to make the cost cut Nissans and Renaults to look good. In the exercise of justifying made to India spec products and depriving us of global products that sold in Europe/Americas/Japan.

They then could choose to axe the brands which failed. Datsun made the cut.

[solaris007]

Please stop with all the celebrations, fanfare and the "I am surprised they stuck around for so long!"/"What was the management thinking?" quotes. Not when we have seen numerous global giants and brands exit our country for greener pastures. These manufacturers/brands did not get to where they are by making seemingly "dumb" mistakes.

You have to wonder whether the problem was with them or with us.

By us, I mean our market situation, our government and us the consumers. Every single manufacturer/brand exit should be a difficult pill to digest. It should give us pause for self-reflection - especially now that it has become a pattern.

[2000rpm]

I think the Indian market success formula is simple. Come in prepared to make heavy investments. Any company which didnt have India as a focus geography, has struggled because their effort has been half hearted.

All companies which went ALL IN, have succeeded. Also revived. Look at Tata, their revival is extraordinary.

[ron178]

Originally Posted by solaris007

You have to wonder whether the problem was with them or with us.

With Ford I'd agree, there were consumers who maybe simply didn't consider them because they were spoilt for choice. But at least they did have a small but loyal customer base, because their products had aspects that appealed to some.

But Datsun? Sorry, it's them. It's this rudimentary first-world notion that 'developing markets want affordable means of transport', then attempting to benchmark against Maruti Suzuki, and expecting it to work. The first thing I'd think of if I had to buy a Datsun is not "let's check out the car" but "how risky is it to buy from this new brand?" and it did not help that Datsun got a lot of bad publicity: shoddy construction, sparse dealers, bad crash test results. Behind the other factors that drives Maruti Suzuki sales lies trust, something Datsun simply couldn't get.

I'm quite worried Citroën might be making the same mistake. The 'affordability' and 'made-for-India' part is something that should spread by word of mouth and not by press releases from the manufacturer.

Originally Posted by Emvi

GO + GO Plus + Redi-GO = GOner!

Did you mean...Ghosner?

[sreejithkk]

I felt if they launched rediGO as their first launch (Instead of Go), they might have tasted better success. Redigo atleast had better looking interior compared to the cheap one in Datsun Go. But by the time RediGo launched, people already lost the trust in brand Datsun.

[wild child]

So, wrapping up is much more wiser than investing in 6 airbags per vehicle!
So that gives us a fair idea on who's next!

[CoolFire]

Originally Posted by GTO

If your product screams "cheap", it won't sell in India.

Very true. Any form of "frugal engineering" , "Out of the box cost saving technique" meets a brutal thrashing from our market, just like most countries. Starting from small things like the centre mounted power window switches in Duster to the very bold rear mounted engine in Nano, such things hardly work at all.

Cost savings may be real for the companies, but they become major car buyer irritants very soon and the overall effect is negative. Today's customers will happily pay for modern features within their budget. They do not want el-cheapo. Datsun models and Nano fell in this bracket and most probably couldn't be saved by any marketing magic. In cars like Duster, all the savings by the cheap interior and hacks could have hardly shaved 50K from the Ex-showroom price, which customers would have happily paid for the extra perceived value.

Slightly OT - Maruti's loss of market share in recent years also stem from the same problem. The fact that the near monopoly company in the Country has not found the means to integrate a sun roof in any of the cars is not taken lightly by today's car buyers. Being Maruti, they may make amends now, just like they did with the big upgrade in interior and features they bought about with the original Swift launch in 2005. Just like now, before that Swift launch, Maruti had been slipping in the market facing a big on-slaught led by Hyundai. They did well to come back to cling on to the near 50% market share for so long. A repeat may be harder, but not impossible.

[Reinhard]

Honestly - I was surprised that the brand actually survived for so long in our market. They practically launched it as "CHEAP" - thats harakiri, and the Japanese should know what it means!

The products I feel were not exactly bad. Especially when pitted against the cheap Maruti counterparts, the cars did offer enough to sell with the right target audience. The revamped RediGO in fact is an excellent city run-about if one has clear requirements from the car. But it was never going to work. Then someone played a trick (my personal gut feeling) and got GNCAP to bad-mouth the GO, and that was death-nails for the brand.

It was a good decision to rebadge the Magnite with Nissan logo rather than Datsun. That probably saved the car from the gallows.
RIP Datsun. A somewhat iconic brand - that got mistreated in our market and now meets its destined end.

[samee_arian]

Bye Bye Datsun.

All I can say it Nissan could never understand the Indian market. First they got good products ahead of time in form of Teana and X-Trail which were way ahead of time and Indian were not prepared for them when they arrived. They had a good product in Micra but somewhere they could not highlight its advantages and translate it into a success. They did fairly well with Sunny and the CAAAR advert seemed to work its magic but they messed up everything when they gave it a mid-life update and the facelift made it look weird. So another good product lost. Kicks could have been a great product but again Nissan couldn't do justice to it. Seems all these failures made them believe that India is a land of cheap cars and they got in Datsun. Datsun go was Micra in a different guise, wish they focused a little bit on interiors instead of just thinking Indians would love all the chrome on the grill. Even Go+ was not a bad product, but looked hideous. RediGo while a better product couldn't take off due to cheap quality and light build.

Good that they have decided to shut shop than come up with half baked strategy and cheap products.

[ArTigor]

Datsun is gone for good, their cars demonstrated the very ugly extent of cost cutting. Take for instance the terrible noise emerging from rear wheel well in the Datsun GO, or the absence of B and C pillar internal trims on the REDIGO, the overall ride experience and ambience in these cars was really poor. Obviously in the same price band Alto and the Kwid offered much better overall experience. Hence products from Datsun could never hold a candle against Maruti or even Renault.
Another major factor Nissan never understood is the target customer. It is not that sub 5 lakh entry level cars were not in demand when Datsun was launched. The entry level hatchback is in demand even today, but the target customer is generally rural and tier 3 town population. Not only Datsun but even Nissan did not have its existence in the rural area, tier 3 towns and tehsils 8 years ago, hence Maruti with its trust and dense network ruled the entry segment. Datsun was primarily present in urban areas, where such cheap products do not make sense, hence it was not received well by the customers.

Yet there are a few things which I appreciate about Datsun cars
1 - Internal space in Datsun GO was good for the price point.
2 - Redigo was a good design from the external perspective.
3 - Redigo facelift AMT was actually a VFM and good product.

[ObsessedByFIAT]

Datsun Go was the only car in its segment to have a 1.2L engine paired with a CVT, whereas the entire competition had only AMT to offer.

Datsun could have used it to their advantage very well, but they chose not to and went all out in cost cutting.

Nissan never really felt serious about Datsun. Heck they are not serious about themselves either!

It's just a game of wait and watch, while Nissan silently exits India for good.

Was Maruti waiting for Datsun's official announcement of exit before they killed the base versions of Alto and Espresso?

[ron178]

Originally Posted by Reinhard

Then someone played a trick (my personal gut feeling)

Max Mosley. ex-FIA president. SaferCarsForIndia was only a research project and was not intended to continue beyond the first round. Then despite a Nissan not being included in the first round Nissan's Andy Palmer said something along the lines of "people criticising these cars for not meeting European standards are living in a dream world" presumably because the previous year Latin NCAP had tested the Nissan Tsuru. Mosley got his revenge against Ghosn and it continued much later into the 2016 Tsuru vs Versa car-to-car test at IIHS and the 2018 NP300 vs Navara test.

When Mosley had started Euro NCAP Renault was the first manufacturer to respond positively. With the Nissan merger and Ghosn's arrival all of that went for a toss. Mosley had serious beef with him.