Nissan 2014 Sales Results Show Big Boost, But Titan Lags - Will NAIAS Unveil Bring a Boost?

The 2016 Nissan Titan is set to unveil next week in Detroit at the North American International Auto Show. With Titan sales dragging down Nissan's totals, which are nevertheless impressive, will the new Titan Diesel be the truck divisions comeback machine?

Nissan has reported their December 2014 and overall 2014 year-end sales figures and they look very good. In total, the Nissan and Infiniti brands together saw an 11.1 percent increase year-on-year for 2013-2014. Nissan as a brand saw 12.2 percent growth.

Most of that growth was in cars, with the Altima sedan, Rogue crossover, LEAF electric car, and Sentra sales jumping considerably and carrying the day for Nissan. But a glaring negative is found when paging through truck model sales, with the Titan seeing a huge 20 percent drop in sales year-on-year while the smaller Frontier saw over 18 percent growth.

The reasons for the losses the Titan has taken and the gains the Frontier has made are fairly straight forward. Both have a very long-in-the-tooth design, having been essentially the same for about a decade now. The Frontier, however, has a lot less competition and a lot more going for it in its segment when compared to the Titan, which competes from the bottom of the huge full-size truck segment. The Titan is noticeably behind Ford, Ram, Toyota, and GM in almost every way. The Frontier, on the other hand, is very comparable to the Tacoma from Toyota and will likely continue to hold its own against the new introductions from General Motors, though Nissan is planning a revamp of the Frontier soon.

As for the Titan, the 2016 Titan unveils in Detroit next week at NAIAS. It's one of the first conferences on schedule at the press days for the Detroit show Monday morning and Torque News will be there bright and early to see it. Watch our Facebook page for instant visuals and the website here for more information.

So can the new Titan bring back the truck's sales? We think so. If the revamp is total and pulls the 2016 Titan forward to its contemporaries, it will be competitive again. With the addition of the Titan Diesel, it will go over the top in terms of potential sales. Until the truck unveils officially, however, no one can say for sure what will happen one way or another. With the background that I've been given, the interviews done, and the knowledge had of the truck so far, I personally expect the 2016 Titan to become a smash hit. Given the marketing that Nissan has put behind it thus far and seems to have planned for the coming year, that's an even easier prediction to make.

Will the 2016 Titan outsell Ram, Toyota, GM, or even the top-selling Ford? Of course not. Will it start taking some market share and getting attention again? For sure.