Terra no more: Nissan’s Fortuner and Everest rival sold out

Amid recent confusion surrounding the Nissan Terra, the local arm of the Japanese automaker has officially confirmed that the Navara-underpinned seven-seater will no longer be offered to the masses.

Initially planned for unveiling in 2020 after being facelifted in the same year, only to be delayed until 2021, the surprise appearance of the Terra’s pricing on vehicle information specialist website, duoporta.com, in March took an unexpected twist days later when it suddenly disappeared altogether.

In addition, no information had appeared on Nissan South Africa’s website. According to IOL Motoring who reported the matter first, the Terra offered a choice of three trim levels; XE, SE and LE with all making use of the 140kW/450Nm 2.5-litre DDTI turbodiesel engine used in the Navara.

Bar the XE, which came with a six-speed manual gearbox as standard, all of the other derivatives sported the seven-speed automatic that featured as an option on the entry-level model.

Selectable four-wheel-drive was standard on the SE and LE with only the automatic XE having the option of the all-paw gripping system.

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Pricing ranged from R596 900 to R853 900 and that translated in the Terra being significantly cheaper than the Ford Everest, Toyota Fortuner and Isuzu MU-X, but not the Mitsubishi Pajero Sport.

Clarifying the confusion, Nissan South Africa Marketing Director, Stefan Haasbroek, told The Citizen earlier this week that while the initial batch of 148 models were snapped-up in quick succession, and will continue to be supported as per the warranty, a decision was made not to go ahead with a full-scale model launch.

“We finally made a call that we wanted to prioritise local production in terms of semi-conductor allocation. For us, local production of the Navara as at the core of our strategy and in times like these, you have to give up something to protect something else,” Haasbroek said.

Confirming that local production at the Rosslyn Plant had indeed been looked into, Haasbroek stated that eventual focus on the Navara, which is also being exported to Sub-Saharan markets, led to the conclusion not to go ahead with Terra.

“At this point in time, our focus is Navara. We will to allocate our production capacity and build more Navaras as much as we can until we saturate the market. When we enter that scenario, only then would be look at other models.

“[Of course], we will continue to build NP200, but only when we reach a point where the market stabilises and we have capacity above that, sure we will consider Terra, but that is a future study,” Haasbroek concluded.