Nissan just announced the 2024 Titan pickup with three changes: a narrowed trim lineup, an SV Bronze Edition Package, and a $120 MSRP increase. We didn’t openly wonder about the full-sizer getting another model year, but the Titan’s demise hasn’t been writing on the wall, it’s been flashing in neon for a few years.
The company pulled the truck from the Canadian market — where Ford’s F-Series pickups have been the top seller since 2009 — after the 2021 model year. The Titan had its best sales year in the U.S. in 2005, didn’t exceed 25,000 sales from 2009 to 2016, rebounded to just over 50,000 after the second-gen’s introduction for 2017, declining since then to 15,064 units for all of 2022. Carscoops got the inside line when “a source” sent the outlet “an internal company document proving production at the Canton, [Mississippi] plant is coming to an end.”
To the outlets that asked Nissan about the news, the automaker sent this statement: “Production of the Nissan Titan is scheduled to end summer 2024 at our Canton plant in Mississippi. Under Nissan’s Ambition 2030 vision of an electrified future, we are accelerating the process of transforming the Canton plant with the latest in EV manufacturing technology. This will support production of two all-new, all-electric vehicles. There will be no workforce reductions due to this action. Titan has been an important nameplate for Nissan in North America for 20 years, and we’re grateful to the dealers, customers, and thousands of employees who have played pivotal roles throughout Titan’s lifecycle.”
The news reinforces what we already knew: Breaking into the full-size U.S. truck market remains one of the greatest challenges in the automotive kingdom, and that “only” wanting a tiny piece of a large pie doesn’t guarantee getting even that. Nissan originally targeted 100,000 annual Titan sales in the U.S. at the Titan’s launch. That’s about where the Tundra pickup, produced by the much larger, much richer, much more aggressive Toyota Motor Corporation, has landed. Given more development budget and focus, the Titan might have made a finer mark.
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