The Drive 🤝 your inbox. Every weekday
The Daily Brief wraps up the biggest stories and our exclusive reporting on the auto industry and car culture.
Nissan wants to be exciting again, but its executives want to earn credibility back and have you feel the lineage as as the turnaround plan is executed. Credibility is earned, not given, and when an automaker slaps a performance badge on just anything it hurts credibility. Nissan’s said those days are behind it.
In an exclusive interview with The Drive, Senior Vice President and Chief Planning Officer for Nissan North America, Ponz Pandikuthira said, “You don’t make a Nismo out of everything just because you can. Nismo has to be authentic.”
When asked if a Nismo version of the 2027 Rogue Hybrid would make sense Pandikuthira was quick to say, “Off the top of my head, no.”
Nissan sells a Nismo version of the Ariya electric crossover in Japan and other parts of the world but didn’t bring it to the U.S. market. “I’m really big on saying, what does that customer really want,” Pandikuthira said.
A Rogue is a relatively pedestrian mass-market vehicle that competes with the Toyota RAV4. Padikuthria said, “If we were to make a Nismo rally car, if you will, out of a Rogue, it’s going to have to have north of, I don’t know, 300 plus horsepower, much different dynamic handling. I would strip out a lot of the elements to make it lightweight. How many real customers do we have for a product like that?”
“Should I put that effort into making a Z Nismo better? Bringing a GT-R to market a lot faster. Am I better off spending time investing in the Rock Creek version, which is really giving more off-road capability, a rugged set of utility tires, and other camping accessories because that’s how people use this car? So if I have to focus on what do people typically who buy a Rogue do with their vehicle, Nismo’s not at the top of the list,” Pandikuthira said.
It’s an interesting proposition, because that’s almost exactly what Toyota did. The new 2026 Toyota RAV4 brought forth a new 320-hp GR Sport model complete with sport-tuned suspension and summer tires.
The current U.S. lineup of Nismo models includes the Z Nismo and Armada Nismo. Which models might get the treatment in the future is unclear, but Rogue won’t be one of them.
Got a tip? Send us a line at tips@thedrive.com
Add The Drive as a preferred source on Google to see more of our reporting.
As Director of Content and Product, Joel draws on over 15 years of newsroom experience and inability to actually stop working to help ensure The Drive shapes the future of automotive media. He’s also a World Car Award juror.
