Iran’s largest auto manufacturer, Iran Khodro Company, will negotiate a business agreement with Datsun, an automobile brand owned by Japan’s Nissan.
According to IKCO’s CEO Hashem Yekezare, the company is set to negotiate a deal with Datsun and if all goes well, Datsun will be selected as IKCO’s sixth international business partner, Eghtesad News reported.
IKCO has finalized deals with Japan’s Suzuki, Germany’s Mercedes-Benz, France’s Peugeot and Renault as well as Italy’s Fiat.
Datsun’s original production run began in 1931. From 1958 to 1986, only vehicles exported by Nissan were identified as Datsun.
By 1986, Nissan had phased out the Datsun name, but re-launched it in 2013 as the brand for low-cost vehicles manufactured for emerging markets, namely Iran.
IKCO has approached Datsun specifically to make up for its main drawback—that is producing affordable cars of high quality.
Experts predict that Datsun can manufacture cars that will cost no more than 400 million rials ($11,500 at market exchange rate). If so, cars produced by Datsun can be an ideal replacement for dilapidated IKCO models that fall in the same price range, such as the Peugeot 405.
