1984 Nissan Pick Up, No Reserve on 2040-cars

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Bret Michaels Poisons Nissan's commercial trucking ops

Mötley Crüe isn't the only 1980s hair-metal band getting into the world of auto promotion. Poison frontman and reality show star Bret Michaels is following their lead and doing some advertising of his own. Where the Crüe have been all over the airwaves in recent years with a Super Bowl ad for Kia and music licensing with Dodge, Michaels has taken a very different route by becoming the pitchman for Nissan Commercial Vehicles.
The videos run the gamut to advertise predominantly the NV line of full-size vans, but the NV200 shows up a few times too. The star of this new campaign is Michaels' full-length music video (above) for the song Tough Love. It's basically a parody of all of those '80s rock ballads where the bands would slow the tempo down a little and reveal their softer side. Michaels rocks out at the Nissan proving grounds in Stanfield, AZ, while showing off the evaluation process and strutting around like a proper rock frontman. There are also a bunch of shorter videos (below) with the singer highlighting each part of the vans' torture testing. Although, the dialogue in these come off a bit more stilted. With these '80s metal bands getting into advertising, can it be long before Warrant is shilling for Fiat or Ratt for Mazda?

Nissan reports $4.13B net income for 2012

The news for Nissan is good when it comes to the company's results for the 2012 financial year that ended on March 31. Even though the numbers were down in many of the world's major markets, increased sales in the US, Brazil and the Middle East, ten new models and a strong fourth quarter allowed Nissan to hit its target for the year and notch record sales of 4.914 million units globally. On net revenue of $116 billion, Nissan posted net income of $4.13 billion and an operating profit of $6.31 billion.
There are upward-looking projections for this year, Nissan forecasting a 7.8-percent jump in sales to 5.3 million units, with $117.89 billion in net revenue and $4.42 billion in net income. That net revenue number probably won't actually match what's reported next year, though, because Nissan is changing its accounting method and won't include revenue and operating profit results from its joint venture with China's Dongfeng. Net income doesn't change under the new method, but the adjusted net revenue forecast is $109.16 billion.
There's a press release and two videos below with more details for those of you who go gaga for annual reports.

Carlos Ghosn returns as president of ACEA

The European Automobile Manufacturers' Association (abbreviated ACEA in French) is an industry group representing all the biggest automakers in Europe, representing their common interests on the world stage. And as such it needs a leader, figurehead and mouthpiece to serve as its president, and for the second time the association's board of directors has chosen Carlos Ghosn.
Now if you're recognizing Ghosn as the CEO of Nissan and wondering what that has to do with European cars, it's not because Nissan manufactures much in Europe. In fact, it only operates has a handful of locations in Europe: one in the UK, one in Barcelona and one in St Petersburg. But you'd be wise to recall that Ghosn also serves as CEO of Renault, one of the biggest players in European automobile manufacturing. He also sits on the boards at Russian automaker AvtoVAZ (of which Renault owns 25 percent) and of his native Brazil's Banco Itaú, not to mention the advisory councils of a handful of universities - two of them from his ancestral hometown of Beirut. He previously served as president of ACEA in 2009, and was re-elected to replace outgoing PSA chairman Philippe Varin.
Alongside Renault, ACEA membership includes BMW, Daimler, Fiat, Jaguar Land Rover, PSA Peugeot Citroën, Volkswagen and Volvo, along with the European divisions of Ford, General Motors, Hyundai and Toyota, as well as a handful of truck manufacturers.