Nissan may get the chance to activate some idled manufacturing capacity in the United States to build trucks for Honda, according to a report from Japan’s Nikkei newspaper. The coverage did not cite a source, but it pointed to Nissan’s Canton, Mississippi, plant as a potential manufacturing location for a Honda pickup.
It would be a huge boon to Nissan, which has drastically scaled back both its existing and projected U.S. manufacturing operations in an effort to curb massive losses sustained over the past 18 months. The company reported a net loss of $4.5 billion for its last full fiscal year.
This isn’t the first time we’ve heard something like this. Back in January, when a full-blown Honda/Nissan merger still looked inevitable, both companies talked about the possibility of Honda cribbing Nissan’s body-on-frame platforms to build larger trucks for the U.S. market.
Currently, the company builds only one pickup for the U.S. market, the unibody Ridgeline. Nissan’s Canton plant currently builds the Frontier, which is a body-on-frame model. Honda has no equivalent in its current portfolio. Could this mean that Honda is considering a pivot to a body-on-frame architecture for its next-generation Ridgeline?
It’s a bit of a leap given the thin sourcing and the lack of specifics, but it makes a certain degree of sense. A U.S.-built (and therefore more tariff-proof) truck utilizing an existing platform would be a cost-effective way to transition the Ridgeline off of Honda’s unibody architecture, which is in the process of being phased out for a new iteration.
And since we’re already speculating, let’s take things one step further. Back in April, Nissan’s Christian Meunier said that the company would “find a way” to bring the Xterra back. It all sounded very pie-in-the-sky, but what happens to the budgetary calculus when you add Honda to the equation? We’re talking about a company with deep pockets and plenty of experience building the sort of hybrid powertrains that could help a midsize body-on-frame SUV thread the world’s regulatory needles.
Wishful thinking? Maybe. But can you really blame us for seeking silver linings in these storm clouds?
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