Nissan won’t be introducing any of its own minicars as long as contracts with original equipment manufacturers remain. Reported by Australia’s Drive, this latest news comes directly from Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn, who stated that "as long as we can have a solid contract with an OEM...as long as we have a reliable contract and we can have products of good quality and that are competitive, we are not thinking about developing minicars by ourselves."

Currently, Nissan’s minicar OEM contracts are tied up with Suzuki and Mitsubishi, and it’s unlikely that any alliance between the three will deepen. The majority of Minicars are sold in the expanding Indian car market, however, high gas prices has seen resurgence in the popularity of 660cc cars back home in Japan.

Sales in Japan have been steadily falling but Ghosn believes that it’s only temporary, with production in Japanese plants set to remain steady for export purposes. However, if demand remains low, Nissan will hold-off on opening new factories in North America.