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Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. (TYO: 7201 , NASDAQ: NSANY), which formerly marketed vehicles under the Datsun brand name, is a Japanese automobile manufacturer. The company's main offices are located in the Ginza area of Chuo-ku, Tokyo, Japan. more...

Nissan plans to move their headquarters to Yokohama, Kanagawa by 2010; the headquarters will start construction in 2007.

The company marketed vehicles under the Nissan and Datsun brand names until 1983, when the Datsun brand name was dropped. Nissan used to be Japan's second largest car company after Toyota, but it has dropped to third in size after Honda. Due to financial problems throughout the 1990s, the French manufacturer Renault bought a controlling share in the company and installed Carlos Ghosn as president, the first non-Japanese person to run a Japanese car company (Mazda was run by an American, Mark Fields and by Briton Lewis Booth and Mitsubishi was run by a German, Rolf Eckrodt).

Under Ghosn's "Nissan Revival Plan" (NRP), Nissan has rebounded in what many leading economists consider to be one of the most spectacular corporate turnarounds in history, catapulting Nissan to record profits and a dramatic revitalization of both its Nissan and Infiniti model line-ups. In 2001, the company initiated Nissan 180, capitalizing on the success of the NRP. Ghosn has since been idolized as a national hero in Japan as a symbol of the strength of the currently ailing Japanese economy, with Ghosn and the Nissan revival story prominently featured in Japanese manga and popular culture. His achievements in revitalizing the Japanese company have been noted by Emperor Akihito, who awarded him the Japan Medal with Blue Ribbon in 2004.

Nissan is also noted for being one of the world's leading manufacturers of automobile engines, with its VG and VQ V6 engines appearing on "Ward's 10 Best Engines" for 12 straight years - every year since the award's inception.

History

In 1914, the Kwaishinsha Motorcar Works (快進自動車工場, Kaishin Jidōsha Kōjō), established three years earlier, in Azabu-Hiroo District in Tokyo, built the first DAT. The new car's name being the acronym of the company's partners' surnames:

• Kenjiro Den (田 健次郎 Den Kenjirō)
• Rokuro Aoyama (青山 禄朗 Aoyama Rokurō)
• Meitaro Takeuchi (竹内 明太郎 Takeuchi Meitarō).

The Works was renamed to Kwaishinsha Motorcar Co. in 1918, and again, in 1925, to DAT Motorcar Co.

The next year, the Tokyo-based company merged with the Osaka-based Jitsuyo Jidosha Co., Ltd. (実用自動車製造株式会社, Jitsuyō Jidōsha Seikoku Kabushiki Gaisha) (established 1919) as DAT Automobile Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (ダット自動車製造株式会社, Dat Jidosha Seizo Kabushiki-Kaisha) in Osaka until 1932. In 1931, the first DATSON—meaning "Son of DAT"—was produced. However, the last syllable was changed to "sun", because "son" also means "loss" (損) in Japanese.

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