An Open Letter to Nissan

Nissan, it’s time to stop pretending everything is fine.

The brand that once defined durability, originality, and grit has spent the last decade chasing competitors instead of outpacing them. The company that built the indestructible Hardbody, the bulletproof Pathfinder, and the scrappy Sentra has drifted into a place where identity feels optional and nostalgia is treated as a liability rather than an asset.

The truth is simple.
Nissan lost the plot.

You didn’t lose because the market changed.
You lost because you stopped being Nissan.

The 1980s lineup wasn’t legendary because of marketing. It was legendary because the vehicles were honest. Unstoppable. Affordable. Mechanical in the best way. They earned loyalty by showing up every day and refusing to die.

People still talk about those trucks and cars because they meant something.

Today’s Nissan feels like a committee-built compromise. The design language wanders. The capability messaging is inconsistent. The product strategy follows instead of leads. And the brand keeps trying to be everything except what made it great.

This is a leadership opportunity disguised as a crisis.

Christian Meunier, the path forward isn’t complicated. Hire designers who aren’t afraid to make statements. Build vehicles that look and feel like Nissan again. Study how Land Rover resurrected the Defender without making it a museum piece. They honored the past while designing a future only they could build. Nostalgia strengthened the brand instead of trapping it.

Nissan can do the same.
Bring back character.
Bring back the edge.
Bring back the vehicles that people buy because they trust them, not because they were the least confusing option on a lot.

The market doesn’t need another anonymous crossover.
The market needs Nissan to have a point of view again.

Stop following.
Stop blending in.
Stop diluting what was once one of the strongest automotive identities on the road.

Reclaim the heritage.
Redefine the future.
Lead again.

Because the world doesn’t need the safest possible Nissan.
It needs the most Nissan version.

Now

How UX Could Save Nissan From Its Identity Crisis

Nissan’s biggest problem isn’t design. It isn’t engineering. It isn’t marketing.
It’s experiencing fragmentation.

The entire ecosystem feels disconnected: the vehicles, the digital platforms, the dealership experience, the service journey, the brand story. Nothing feels unified, and nothing reinforces a clear identity.

UX can fix that, but only if Nissan stops treating UX like interface decoration and starts treating it like organizational architecture.

Here’s what that actually looks like.

1. Rebuild the Brand Experience From the User Backwards

Nissan needs to understand something brutally simple: people don’t experience cars as features. They experience them as confidence, reliability, and identity.

UX’s job is to expose where that confidence erodes:

Unclear trim differences
Inconsistent dealership messaging
Complex digital-to-dealer handoffs
Hard-to-navigate online shopping
Poor service transparency
No emotional throughline across touchpoints

UX should own the entire customer journey, not a set of screens.

Until Nissan has one unified experience map governing the brand, every product decision will feel random.

2. Create a Vehicle Lineup With Understandable Logic

A huge UX problem in the automotive world is product line sprawl.
Nissan suffers from this badly.

The average buyer can’t explain the difference between a Kicks, Rogue, Rogue Sport, Murano, and Pathfinder without a cheat sheet.

If the product lineup reads like a logic puzzle, the experience is already broken.

UX must:

simplify naming
clarify positioning
eliminate redundancy
visualize the buyer’s decision path
remove cognitive load

When the product line makes sense, buyers feel smart. When it doesn’t, they walk away.

3. Fix the Digital Ecosystem (Nissan’s Silent Weakness)

Nissan’s apps and digital tools feel like afterthoughts. The UI is inconsistent, the flows feel legacy-bound, and the system behaves like a collection of disconnected portals instead of a cohesive platform.

If you want to modernize a brand, the digital experience must be as strong as the product.

UX should:

build a unified design system
standardize flows across all digital products
rebuild the app around usefulness instead of features
eliminate multi-step authentication chaos
streamline remote start, vehicle health, and service scheduling
add predictive intelligence using real data

Right now, Nissan’s digital presence feels like the brand equivalent of dial-up internet.

4. Transform the Dealership Experience (the Moment Nissan Loses Most Customers)

Dealership UX is where modern automotive brands differentiate.
Nissan’s dealership experience feels stuck in 2008.

Inconsistent pricing
Poor transparency
Sales-first instead of needs-first
No unified digital-to-dealership handoff
Service centers that feel transactional instead of supportive

UX needs to redesign the entire dealership flow:

digital pre-qualification
real-time inventory visibility
clear pricing confidence
a consistent onboarding experience
transparent maintenance journeys

If Tesla, Rivian, and even Hyundai can modernize this, Nissan has no excuse.

5. Bring Back the Heritage Through Experience, Not Aesthetics

Nissan’s 1980s strength wasn’t just design.
It was clarity of purpose.

Hardbody was a truck.
Pathfinder was an adventure platform.
Sentra was practical reliability.
300ZX was performance with personality.

Today’s Nissan lineup feels like a collection of compromises.

UX can restore that identity — not by copying old shapes — but by defining experience pillars that guide every decision:

Unbreakable capability
Honest simplicity
Mechanical honesty
Purpose-built design
Reliability over gimmicks

Land Rover did this with the Defender.
Ford did it with the Bronco.
Toyota did it with the 4Runner and Tacoma.

UX defines the brand’s soul — so engineering, design, and marketing don’t lose it again.

6. Build a Continuous Learning Loop (Most Automakers Still Don’t Do This)

UX isn’t a one-time program.
It’s a feedback engine.

Nissan needs:

real usage analytics across vehicle interfaces
real post-service feedback loops
real dealership-to-corporate reporting
real customer sentiment tracking beyond surveys
real longitudinal experience mapping

Right now, Nissan operates like it hears its customers in quarterly echoes.

UX fixes that by turning the company outward again.

The Simple Summary

UX can’t fix Nissan by making better screens.
UX fixes Nissan by making the entire company coherent.

A unified identity.
A rational product line.
A seamless digital ecosystem.
A modern dealership experience.
A revived brand purpose.
A continuous learning feedback loop.

UX is Nissan’s chance to stop following.
Stop shape-shifting.
Stop diluting its heritage.

UX is how Nissan becomes Nissan again.

How can this be done?

A Direct Advisory Plan for Nissan Leadership

If Nissan wants to stop drifting and start leading again, UX cannot remain a downstream execution function. It must become a strategic operating system across the entire company. The problem is not styling, features, or marketing. The problem is fragmentation and identity loss.

This plan rebuilds Nissan from the inside out.

1. Establish a Unified Experience Office with Authority

You cannot fix a broken experience by scattering responsibility across design, product, marketing, engineering, and dealerships. Every decision becomes compromised.

Nissan needs a Chief Experience Officer (CXO) with full authority across:

digital
vehicle HMI
dealership experience
service journey
brand experience
customer insights
design system governance

If you do not centralize experience leadership, you will continue building vehicles, apps, and services that behave like strangers to each other.

Timeline: 60 days
Success metric: one unified experience map used at every leadership meeting

2. Rebuild Nissan’s Identity Around Three Non-negotiable Brand Pillars

Your current brand position is unclear, reactive, and forgettable. You need experience pillars that define what Nissan is and what Nissan will never be again.

Recommended pillars:

Unbreakable reliability
Honest simplicity
Purpose-built capability

Every vehicle, screen, dealership script, and service interaction must reinforce these pillars. Without guardrails, the brand keeps drifting.

Timeline: 90 days
Success metric: all product lines realigned under a single identity

3. Rationalize the Product Lineup

Your lineup confuses customers and undermines sales. People cannot articulate the difference between your crossovers. When consumers cannot explain your products, they will not buy them.

Restructure:

collapse overlapping segments
simplify naming
define clear buyer archetypes
give each vehicle a purpose
kill models that dilute identity

Nissan needs clarity, not coverage.

Timeline: 6 months
Success metric: a lineup a normal human can explain without a glossary

4. Rebuild the Digital Ecosystem from Scratch

Your digital experience is outdated and fragmented. Apps feel bolted-on. Online shopping is clumsy. Service scheduling is inconsistent. HMI design lacks cohesion. These failures signal a brand without control of its ecosystem.

Actions:

create a unified design system
rebuild the app as a vehicle companion, not a feature bucket
design dealer tools that match the consumer experience
integrate predictive maintenance and intelligent recommendations
fix authentication and identity management
align in-vehicle UI with mobile UI

If your digital experience feels 2015, your brand feels 2015.

Timeline: 12–18 months
Success metric: a single UX language across all devices and vehicles

5. Redesign the Dealership Experience — Your Biggest Weak Point

Dealership UX is where Nissan loses credibility. Buyers experience:

pricing ambiguity
inconsistent messaging
high friction
poor digital-to-store continuity
service opacity

You need a Dealership Experience Standard enforced across all franchises.

Actions:

transparent pricing
digital reservation to in-store continuation
consistent test drive journey
real-time inventory visibility
clear service predictions with costs
post-service feedback loops tied to incentives

This is where Toyota, Hyundai, and Tesla have already surpassed you. Match them or fall further.

Timeline: pilot in 3 markets within 6 months
Success metric: measurable reduction in customer confusion and complaint categories

6. Modernize Vehicle HMI and Interior UX

Your in-vehicle digital experience lags behind competitors. You cannot build brand identity if the interface feels generic.

Actions:

simplify menus
remove redundant controls
increase context awareness
use personalization responsibly
introduce consistent visual vocabulary
support seamless mobile-to-vehicle transitions

Interior UX should reflect the brand pillars. Right now, it doesn’t.

Timeline: integrated into next model refresh cycle
Success metric: reduced driver distraction, increased feature adoption

7. Create a Continuous Learning Engine

You do not have a real system for capturing and acting on customer behavior across the ownership lifecycle.

Build it:

vehicle usage analytics
real-time UX telemetry
service sentiment loops
dealer feedback ingestion
predictive failure modeling
longitudinal customer behavior tracking

Without this, you are designing blind.

Timeline: 12 months
Success metric: insights driving at least 40 percent of roadmap decisions

8. Bring Nissan’s Heritage Forward, Not Backward

Do not copy the 1980s shapes. Copy the attitude.

That means products built with:

clarity
durability
capability
character
confidence

Land Rover did this with Defender. Ford did it with Bronco. Jeep did it with Wrangler.

Nissan can reclaim this space — if it stops chasing competitors and starts owning its lineage.

Timeline: immediate for concept vehicles
Success metric: consumers can articulate what Nissan stands for in one sentence

The Non-negotiable Truth

You’re not losing because of engineering.
You’re not losing because of design.
You’re losing because the experience is incoherent.

UX is not decoration.
UX is not UI.
UX is your competitive strategy.

Until Nissan treats UX as the backbone of the brand, every win will be temporary and every model refresh will repeat the same cycle of drift.

If Nissan wants to lead again, this is the path.