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Nissan has made plenty of headlines over the past year, and not all of them have been positive.
From rumours of impending insolvency — which, it’s worth pointing out, never came to pass — to mass layoffs, production pauses, and even a potential merger with Honda, it’s been a tumultuous time for the automaker that was once among the industry’s biggest. So what’s to be made of all this upheaval? It depends who you ask.
Of course, the brand’s executives are beaming with positivity about the future. And with all they have to share, it’s easy to buy into the excitement that includes promises of getting back to Nissan’s roots — and even the return of the exalted Xterra more than a decade after it was discontinued.
But there are steps it needs to take first, including getting back into a few key segments and entering new ones altogether. And with production of three Canada-bound vehicles set to resume shortly after being paused earlier this year, plus the brand’s first plug-in hybrid (PHEV) entry on its way, Nissan is charting a course correction that starts now.
Getting Back on Track
Nissan Americas chairman Christian Meunier didn’t mince words when he talked about what went wrong for the brand over the years, particularly in this part of the world. Not many people have the same sort of insight as Meunier, who spent more than 15 years at the company — including a stint as president of its Canadian operations — before defecting to Jeep in 2019.
“I think the company was in a negative spiral, and I think that has changed,” said Meunier, who returned to Nissan in January 2025 after a half-decade hiatus. “I think the product portfolio that we have, and the product portfolio that we will have in (12 to 18 months), shows that … the future is bright for Nissan.”
And the same goes for Infiniti, the automaker’s premium sub-brand, which Meunier described as having “a good plan” that includes a new product in each of the next five years after stagnating in recent times — especially as rivals have pushed ahead with improved products. That could include the return of a sport sedan, and one that might even offer a manual transmission.
“We see that as an opportunity to connect back to our heritage, of Infiniti being very successful with the G35, G37, Q50,” Infiniti Americas vice-president Tiago Castro said. “And then we’re also evaluating a manual transmission … to make it really something that when you look at it, it’s unique.”
For Nissan, it isn’t just mainstream products that are receiving renewed focus — although those are unquestionably important — but some of the most influential models from its history, too. Beyond the Xterra, which Meunier described as coming back as a “badass,” the vaunted Nissan GT-R will be back, too. It’s just a matter of when.
“The GT-R will be back,” said Ponz Pandikuthira, senior vice-president and chief product and planning officer for Nissan Americas, “I just cannot confirm what the date is, and it’s not because I want to be vague about this.
“To bring a GT-R back, it has to authentically be a GT-R, and we know the way the emissions regulations are progressing, (it) will have to have some form of electrification to make it comply.”
Tariff-Driven Troubles
Among the products paused in response to the tariffs and counter-tariffs implemented by the United States and Canada, respectively — “a 25 per cent tariff is a hard pill to swallow,” Meunier said plainly — is the three-row Nissan Pathfinder, which is being built for the Canadian market once more starting in early 2026. As it happens, it’s also been updated with a new look.
What’s unchanged is the mechanical stuff that underpins the Pathfinder — for better or worse. That the brand is sticking with a V6 powertrain makes it one of the few SUVs like it that hasn’t yet downsized to a four-cylinder or switched to a hybrid setup (or both). But that also means it doesn’t necessarily feel like it’s part of the step forward Nissan is looking to take.
Manufacturing of the Canadian-spec Murano crossover and Frontier pickup, both of which are built alongside the Pathfinder, is also set to resume, although Nissan hasn’t announced any changes to those models. And in fairness, the Murano was just overhauled for 2025 before production was paused.
However, any hopes of the automaker one day assembling vehicles in Canada should be tempered considering what it would take to get there. According to Meunier, Nissan would need an annual sales volume of about 200,000 units — double what it currently sells here — to make localized production a viable solution.
In the meantime, it plans to turn to some of its global technologies, including a unique gas-electric powertrain based on the series hybrid technology Nissan currently offers in Europe and Asia. And while it wasn’t revealed at the time of this writing, the promising system is set to make its North American debut in the next-generation Rogue.
Leveraging Partnerships
Another pillar of Nissan’s plan is to leverage what’s available through its global alliance, which is how the all-new 2026 Nissan Rogue PHEV came to be. Well, at least it’s new to Nissan; in fact, it’s identical to the existing Outlander PHEVmade by Mitsubishi, of which Nissan owns about a 25 per cent stake.
While both brands’ compact crossovers have been built on a shared platform for a number of years now, the first-ever Rogue PHEV is identical to its corporate cousin except for their badges. And while there’s nothing wrong with the vehicle or its technology, it doesn’t look like the start of a cascade of partner products from Nissan — although the opposite could be true.
“We’re open for business,” Pandikuthira said. “We’re discussing with different automotive (companies) what vehicles we could build with them, because to develop a truly profitable vehicle you need scale, and partnerships do give you scale and allow you to bring cool vehicles to market.”
In particular, according to Pandikuthira, partnerships can help automakers thrive when it comes to building electric vehicles (EVs), which require scale to make sense.
“There are more niche vehicles you can bring to the marketplace if you do it with partners,” he said. “The whole industry has figured out that you can’t bring EVs to market if you only sell 40,000 or 50,000 units. So partnerships in the EV space will definitely be a top priority.”
Final Thoughts
More than anything else, what Nissan’s North American leaders are promising is a newfound focus on the passion that’s largely been lost in recent years. According to Meunier, among the first questions he asked when he came back to the company was whether or not the engine from the GT-R would work in the Infiniti QX80 — a wild idea, but one that came to life.
While it’s unlikely a production version of the 1,000-horsepower QX80 R-Spec concept is within the realm of possibilities, he said something based on it has to be part of Nissan’s new way forward.
“These are the kinds of things we need to do,” Meunier said. “We need this spice in every segment (we compete). I think the passion needs to be back in everything we do.”
