Autoblog

Don't think of the Nissan plant in Canton, Mississippi as losing the ability to produce two models, think of it as gaining the capacity to build more pickup trucks.

An article in the business publication, Nihon Keizai, reports that the Mississippi plant will cease production of both the Nissan Quest minivan and the Infiniti QX56 SUV by 2009, shifting production of the two vehicles to facilities in Japan.

As both vehicles are primarily sold in North America, it was beneficial for the automaker to produce the vehicles stateside until now. Unfortunately, slow sales of the Quest (down 28 percent so far this year) and QX56 have proven that production here in the U.S. is becoming too costly to justify and, according to the article, the plants in Japan have the ability retool and manufacture at a quicker rate.

On the bright side, no production capacity will be lost in Canton, where Nissan plans to increase truck production to meet the current manufacturing levels.

[Source: Nihon Keizai via CNN Money]