Nissan Canada President Steve Milette says a move away from fleet sales is behind the brand’s deeper-than-average decline in Canadian sales volume over the past few months.
While light vehicle sales are down 3.8 per cent year-over-year in Canada through the end of October, Nissan is down 8.5 per cent in Canada over the same period, according to the Automotive News Data Center. The last few months have seen steeper declines: 13 per cent year-over-year for the months of September and October, 7.6 for August, and 12 in June and July.
Milette says that while retail sales could be stronger and Nissan dealers in the country “would expect to do a little bit more [volume] at this point in time … the vast majority of the decline would be from the fleet business.”
“Our strategy is one of quality of sales, which means that we're really interested in growing the retail piece,” Milette told Automotive News Canada. “This is the year, unfortunately, where we’re taking some volume out of the rental channel.”
Milette said that while fleet business is still “a good thing,” the brand sees this move as being important for the brand’s status in Canada long-term.
“We feel [fleet sales are] not a good thing for residuals and a sustainable business model, so we had to pare back,” said Milette, who was appointed to the role of president in May 2019. “The total sales over the last six years, they increased 82 per cent in Canada, so retail, fleet, all channels grew quite significantly. Now, we're just course-correcting on the types of sales that we're willing to do, and then we're going to go full speed ahead on the pure retail business.”
