Nissan planning big diesels?

Posted by: Ian Rowley on October 29, 2006

Nissan are keeping quiet but reports in Japan claim that the Japanese automaker is planning to launch six and seven liter diesel heavy duty trucks for the U.S. market by 2009. According to today’s Nihon Keizai, a Japanese business paper, Nissan will build the trucks at its Canton plant. However, Nissan doesn’t plan to make it’s own engines but procure them from “outside the group.” The report adds that the sales target will be in the “in the tens of thousands.”

If the report is correct, and Nissan says the Nikkei story is “speculative”, it’s another sign of the growing interest in cleaner diesels. While American and European automakers are looking introduce midsize and large diesel vehicles, Honda is working on a clean diesel for the U.S. based on the engine it uses in Accords in Europe.