"Nissan is focusing on key models and segments (...). Production of the Datsun redi-GO will stop at the Chennai plant" in India, according to a statement from Nissan sent to AFP.
This site was the last to produce Datsuns, Nissan having already stopped producing them in 2020 in Indonesia and Russia following a major restructuring plan for the group on a global scale.
Barely some 7,000 units of this brand had been sold in 2021, a spokeswoman for the group told AFP.
Sales will continue while supplies last and after-sales services will be maintained for vehicles in circulation, Nissan added in its press release.
Nissan had already buried Datsun for the first time in 1981, before Carlos Ghosn decided in 2013 to relaunch it as a low-cost brand in emerging countries, like Dacia at Renault.
A Datsun redi-Go during its launch at India's Chennai plant in 2017 ARUN SANKAR AFP
After the fall of Mr. Ghosn at the end of 2018, prosecuted in Japan for alleged financial embezzlement and who fled to Lebanon a year later, Nissan leaders drastically refocused the group's strategy on its key markets rather than racing volumes.
The origins of Datsun date back to the 1910s and its first model was launched in 1931. Two years later, the brand was bought by what would become Nissan.
The brand had had its heyday in the 1950s and 60s, and had sold 20 million of its models in 190 countries until its first disappearance in 1981.
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