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Nissan's Nismo celebrates 30th year with video retrospective

Nismo, the motorsports and high-performance arm of Nissan, has a lot of racing success to celebrate in its history and possibly even bigger accomplishments to look forward to. The company is commemorating its 30th anniversary with a video looking back at its most important milestones from each year of its past.
Nismo's job first and foremost at its genesis was to excel at motorsports. It wasn't too long after the division was founded in 1984 that the company made its first of many attempts to take an overall victory in the 24 Hours of Le Mans. It never quite succeeded in that goal, but still managed to do well in long-distance competition elsewhere. At the same time, Nismo was racking up wins in touring car races in Japan.
Eventually, the division's engineers started dipping their toes into tuning road cars, in addition to going racing. What began as something sporadic has become a growing part of the Nissan lineup with Nismo-branded models of the 370Z, Juke, Note in Europe and the GT-R.

Nissan reportedly rejecting Renault proposal for closer ties

TOKYO — Nissan Motor Co Ltd will reject a management integration proposal from French partner Renault SA and will call for an equal capital relationship, the Nikkei newspaper said on Monday, citing sources. Nissan's management feels the Japanese company has not been treated as an equal of Renault under existing capital ties, and a merger would make this inequality permanent, the Nikkei reported. The outlook for the alliance — one of the world's top automaking partnerships — has been in focus since the arrest in November of its main architect, Carlos Ghosn, on charges of financial misconduct. The former Nissan and Renault chairman has denied the charges against him and has said he was the victim of a boardroom coup by Nissan executives opposed to closer ties. To which, Bloomberg reported that it has seen emails in which Nissan executives were working with Japanese government officials to defend the company's independence, as Ghosn was pushing for a full merger. The emails indicate growing concern at high levels of the Japanese government, in the months before Ghosn's arrest, that his merger efforts would boost Renault and its largest shareholder, the French government, and harm Nissan, in a relationship the Japanese already saw as lopsided. The emails indicated a desire to keep the existing structure of the alliance with a "re-balancing of the shareholding" to reduce Renault's 43 percent stake in Nissan, and stated that Nissan's independence "should be respected." Nissan declined to comment directly on the emails, while reiterating that misconduct by Ghosn and his former aide, Greg Kelly, is "the sole cause of the chain of events." Renault saved Nissan from the brink of bankruptcy two decades ago and under their current capital alliance, the French company holds greater control over its much larger partner. Nissan Chief Executive Hiroto Saikawa declined to say whether the company had received a merger proposal from Renault. "Now is not the time to think of such things," he told a group of reporters outside of his house in Tokyo. "At the moment we are focused on improving Nissan's earnings performance. Please give us time to do that." Renault declined to comment on the report. Renault has argued in its proposal that an integration would maximize synergies within the French-Japanese alliance, according to the Nikkei. The Financial Times reported last month of Renault's intention to restart merger talks with Nissan within 12 months.

Autoblog Podcast #390

Episode #390 of the Autoblog Podcast is here, and this week, Dan Roth, Steven Ewing and Sebastian Blanco from Autoblog Green talk about the 2015 Ford Mustang specs, the 2016 Smart models, a proposal to add real-world numbers to EPA economy tests and the potential downside of autonomous cars. We start with what's in the garage and finish up with some of your questions, and for those of you who hung with us live on our UStream channel, thanks for taking the time. Check out the new rundown below with times for topics, and you can follow along down below with our Q&A. Thanks for listening! Autoblog Podcast #390: The video meant to be presented here is no longer available. Sorry for the inconvenience. Topics: 2015 Ford Mustang specs 2016 Smart FourTwo and FourFour EPA wants road tests The downside of autonomous cars In the Autoblog Garage: 2014 Nissan Leaf 2015 Audi A3 Sportback E-Tron 2014 Scion tC Hosts: Dan Roth, Steven Ewing, Sebastian Blanco Runtime: 01:33:35 Rundown: Intro and Garage - 00:00 Mustang Specs - 34:40 2016 Smart Models - 51:14 EPA Tests - 01:02:57 Autonomous Cars - 01:11:19 Q&A - 01:21:22 Get the podcast: [UStream] Listen live on Mondays at 10 PM Eastern at UStream [iTunes] Subscribe to the Autoblog Podcast in iTunes [RSS] Add the Autoblog Podcast feed to your RSS aggregator [MP3] Download the MP3 directly Feedback: Email: Podcast at Autoblog dot com Review the show in iTunes Podcasts Audi Ford Nissan Scion smart Electric Hybrid