WE ARE now just a few days away from the biggest month of the year. I wanted to give you an update of the market and of Nissan’s position.
In the first few weeks of the year we have seen the total passenger car market stabilise at a similar level to last year. What is interesting is that in a reversal of the recent trend, the retail market is slightly up year on year at one per cent above and the fleet market slightly weaker.
Our expectation for March is that this situation will continue, so we expect the market to be roughly in line with last year.
Nissan new car registrations so far this year are up 16 per cent on 2011, and our forward order trend is most encouraging with a very healthy new order take each week for the past three weeks.
Going into the month we expect to have more than 70 per cent of the current campaign requirement covered by orders. This is a fantastic performance, so well done to all!
The feedback we have from the network is that whilst each and every customer needs to be worked for, there are good levels of traffic. The last two weeks in particular have seen a significant uptick in orders.
I am repeating what I have mentioned earlier, but the car market in total seems to belie the doom and gloom which appears on our TV screens most evenings. We need to remember that there are people out there buying cars and the really excellent news is that more and more of them are buying Nissan.
Good luck for the next few weeks.