Nissan Pulsar Retired From Europe As Consequence Of Poor Demand

The Almera sedan sold in Russia will suffer from the same fate later this year.

By: Adrian Padeanu

Sep 12, 2018 at 6:06am ET

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Let’s pour one out for the Pulsar as Nissan has decided to withdraw the model from the European market. As a matter of fact, production of the five-door hatchback in Euro spec quietly ended back in June as a response to “a rapidly increasing switch by European customers from traditional vehicle segments to crossovers.” Long story short, the Pulsar – which was introduced in 2014 - never lived up to Nissan’s expectations in terms of sales.

The original plan was to reach an annual target of 64,000 units, but the Japanese automaker was only able to move 25,221 cars last year as per sales figures published by market researchers JATO Dynamics. Built in Barcelona, the Pulsar failed to compete with the big names in this segment, namely the Volkswagen Golf, Ford Focus, Renault Megane, Honda Civic, and the Skoda Octavia. The Pulsar will solider on in China where it’s locally sold as the Tiida.

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There’s more bad news to share as Nissan will soon discontinue another compact car, the Almera sedan exclusively available in Russia. Even though it ended up being the company’s best-selling model in 2014 with 46,225 sales, the car’s popularity dramatically decreased in the following years, prompting Nissan now to pull the plug. The model currently produced in Togliatti at a Renault-owned AvtoVAZ factory will be phased out later this year as a consequence of lackluster sales.

By terminating production of both the Pulsar hatchback and the Russia-only Almera sedan, it effectively means Nissan is exiting Europe’s hugely competitive compact car lineup if we don’t take into account the purely electric Leaf.

Source: Nissan via Automotive News Europe