Cool Nissan History

***Jeff*** · Mar 10th, 2004, 10:36 AM

Just something I found on the web.

Quote:

Nissan is the fifth largest manufacturer of automobiles in the world. Nissan was started jointly by two companies “Nichon Sangio” and “Tobate Imono” in 1933. The company was known originally as Datsun, short for “Dshidosho Seyze”, and was renamed Nissan one year later (short “Nichon Sangio”, which means “Japanese industry”). But for overseas sales the name Datsun was used until 1982. On the company logo, the circle represents the sun, and the rectangle represents the sky. Together, the company claims, the logo symbolizes them motto ‘Honesty brings Success”. The merging of Nissan and Renault was one of the largest in the automobile world. At the end of 1999, by production capacity, Nissan-Renault was sixth, just below DaimlerChrysler and Volkswagen. In production of passenger cars, Nissan-Renault was on fifth place. In Japan, Nissan is second in size only to Toyota. Nissan is planning to cut its production costs by a less diverse gamma of models and cooperation with Renault.
Today, Nissan’s range of models produced only for Japan includes over thirty families of models whose fate is under question. In Europe Nissan sells only ten families of models, six of which are assembled in Nissan’s English and Spanish branches.