Posted on 02/07/2025 8:25:38 AM PST by SeekAndFind
he budding romance between Honda and Nissan may have already come to an end.
On Thursday, Nissan president Makoto Uchida informed his counterpart, Honda president Toshihiro Mibe, that he was pulling out of merger talks, according to several media reports.
A withdrawal ends months of behind-the-scenes conversations between the two Japanese carmakers. The two auto giants, along with fellow carmaker Mitsubishi Motors, announced in late December that they would explore a merger, possibly creating the world’s third-largest automaker.
Honda, No. 57 on the most recent Fortune Global 500 ranking, reported $141.3 billion in revenue for 2023; Nissan, at No. 136, reported $87.8 billion. Together, Honda and Nissan’s combined revenue of $229.1 billion would have pushed them to No. 22 on the 2024 Global 500, just behind JPMorgan. And it would have been the third-largest automaker on the ranking, behind Volkswagen and Toyota.
Yet, Nissan’s future reportedly became the sticking point in negotiations.
Honda, the larger company, had the upper hand from the beginning. In their joint statement announcing the start of merger talks, the two companies revealed that Honda would nominate the head of the merged company, and appoint the majority of its board members.
As talks progressed, Honda’s position reportedly shifted to making its smaller competitor a subsidiary. Nissan, on the other hand, preferred a joint holding company. (Mitsubishi Motors, which has Nissan as a major shareholder, decided to turn down the merger in late January, according to the Yomiuri, a Japanese newspaper.)
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Nissan makes junk.
I like the style of their Qashqi. It’s very pretty.
I was hoping they could merge.
This would have made no sense for Honda, I’m surprised they even considered it.
Honda has to get bigger. Spread the costs of new development over more vehicles. That’s what Toyota did, very successfully.
And get rid of those damned CVT’s!
“I am not sure who buys Nissan automobiles these days.”
I notice a lot of the diversity crowd buys them.
Nissan has been in trouble for years, the first thing I thought of when I first heard this merger was the Studebaker Packard merger where Studebaker’s board suckered Packard, now they would both probably gone out of business soon anyway but the Stude board certainly flushed Packard down the tubes early.
It was nice of Honda to entertain it, but there’s no way they’d take over Nissan. It’s too polluted by European crap and they basically gave cars away to people with really poor credit to stay afloat.
I rather like the healthy competition between the individual Japanese car companies and am not for this merger. Just look at the stalantis group and their mergers that killed American companies they’re all behemoths, they’re all the same and they’re junk and they’re too expensive.
I bought an Xterra 15 years ago and have absolutely loved it. I would buy another one, but they stopped making them. My only issue has been some electrical stuff.
Honda needs real pickups. That had to be the real reason behind the merger.
I tested the new Frontier and was duly impressed. I'm sticking with my older Toyotas for now.
A positive move for Honda!
Honda doesn't need the headaches
Didn’t help that Nissan allied itself with Renault (which a percentage of is owned by the French Gov’t). That was their downfall.
NISSAN IS DEAD.
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