Noticed Nissan just announced a 12000+ layoff or close to 10% of its' workforce. Just wondering if the massive bad CVT costs had anything to do with it.

Maybe when , not if, our CVT's go bad we can hire one of them on the side , and cheap for repairs

Big Oof. According to what I read, most of the layoffs are going to be factory workers. They also plan on cutting the product line down by 10 percent. It seems they think their problem is over production and not the high fail rate of CVTs as well as the stigma the company has with them.

Maybe CVTs are just that cheap to make they can profit while making two per vehicle?

I think they are leaving parts OUT , even the "two" together probly don't have all the complete part #'s that's sposed to be in ONE !

To answer the original question, the CVT class action lawsuit itself did not exactly help Nissan's woes, as well as their ill-advised decision to purchase Jatco, the manufacturer of those infamously fragile CVT's, and their determination to quickly infest their product line with them before making sure they were as durable as the trannies they replaced. But I doubt that was among the primary reasons. There were plenty of other bigger bad decisions, including propping up their sales volume with profit killing fleet/rental sales, aggressive discounting on the retail and mismanagement.

I feel as though trimming down is probably a good idea, but I just cant shake the feeling they will trim down on the wrong things. AWD altima? bye. Infiniti G coupe? Bye. Hello again crossover Cabriolet!

ZF8 all the things.

Bubba1 wrote: ↑

Fri Jul 26, 2019 2:49 am

...their ill-advised decision to purchase Jatco, the manufacturer of those infamously fragile CVT's, and their determination to quickly infest their product line with them before making sure they were as durable as the trannies they replaced.

From the beginning, I definitely had the feeling that Nissan had sunk massive R&D resources into CVTs and their poor, old-fashioned leadership decided the best course was to press ahead with the results instead of scrap the result, eat the cost, and try to catch back up. It seemed obviously a bad decision, but as the rest of the market started using CVTs in select cases, it seemed like maybe the public was going to accept the new tech.

I think the key flaw is Nissan's CVTs were not only some of the earliest common of the type, they were also dramatically worse than others. That may not have been a problem if they had improved over time (as ALL the competition's transmissions did, regardless of type). But they demonstrably did not. Nissan's CVTs are every bit as awful today as they were in 2007, with perhaps the exception of a very slight increase in dependability. But it's not dependability alone (or arguably even most significantly) that people hate. It's Nissan's tuning of the transmissions, and their ill-designed pairings with engines renowned for poor powerbands and poor NVH. Nissan's implementations meant that the bad CVTs and the sub-par engines highlighted each-other's weaknesses in a very noticeable way.
I could sort of see someone getting in a CVT Honda or Mitsubishi and not really "noticing" that things are odd. Surely, they'd notice a difference. But with Nissan, something is clearly starkly odd and unpleasant.

And as far as Jatco, Nissan didn't merely purchase them. The FOUNDED them, alongside Ford, back in the 80s. It seemed like a strange decision even at the time, and once the results were shown it seemed even stranger. There's never been a Jatco transmission that wasn't a grenade with the pin removed. How you can take the expertise of two large automakers, focus it on a specific component, and still make the worst there ever has been is mystifying. But considering it was Nissan and Ford, it's not really shocking. Both brands have a habit of getting the easy stuff wrong and the weird stuff right.


I think it's been kind of a perfect storm of the rest of the industry doing what was clearly right, and Nissan taking The Stupid Road and hoping they can get it right.
Not only did Nissan press forward with very sub-par CVTs too early, but automatic transmissions have improved by absolutely astounding amounts in the last 15 years. It has reached the point where the automatic is really the best solution for almost every use case, with a few small exceptions (enthusiasts, certain scalable use cases like heavy trucks, etc.).
Modern autos manage power losses better, can skipshift (IT'S ABOUT DAMN TIME), offer enough gears to adapt from single passenger to heavy towing payloads effectively, are much more durable, manage heat better, and have much better electronic tuning and programs.


When Nissan launched the first CVTs in the north American market in the Versa, buyers were pretty confused. There were three transmission options: an ancient awful 4-speed Jatco automatic, that had been a bad transmission 10 years before and was patently unacceptable by the early 2000s; a 5-speed manual; and a CVT.
The manual offered by far the best fuel economy AND reliability. The 4 speed had the best driving traits for the average person, but it wasn't well-mannered and a transmission made from gold would have been more durable. And the CVT was bad at everything. Worse fuel economy in the real world than either of the other two, even worse manners than the 4AT (although without the slow, mushy, sludgy shifts). And it left the coarse little 4-banger droning alone intrusively at all times.

So when Nissan started cramming those CVTs in VQ and QR powered cars, things weren't going to get much better. Sure, both of those engines have broad torque curves, but their ability to apply that torque as usuable power is extremely narrow. They get wheezy on the top-end, they're weak on the low-end, and the falloff is dramatic enough that shifts can feel harsher than you'd expect. Of course, the CVT eliminated the shift issues, but only by keeping the engines within a 1000RPM range at ALL times. Awful.


At the end of the day, the only people who ever thought a Jatco CVT-only lineup was a good idea were Nissan executives, and several of those are now facing embezzlement charges, so that tells you just how well their reasoning skills work.

So yeah. It's about time this Stupid bit them in the a**.

Another excellent analysis from the Minister , I love the phrase " getting the easy stuff wrong and the weird stuff right " I definately can relate to that in Ford (never and will never own ), I'll add that to my "toolbox' if the Minister does'nt mind .

In short, the Renault bean counters ran Nissan into the ground again.

Nissan has ignored enthusiasts
Nissan refuses to refresh their product line on models that should be their bread and butter (Frontier, Pathfinder, etc.)
Nissan has let its image models stagnate without refreshes for over a decade (GTR, 370Z)

They pretty much deserve to be bankrupted at this point.

Desert Rat wrote: ↑

Tue Aug 06, 2019 2:19 pm

In short, the Renault bean counters ran Nissan into the ground again.

Nissan has ignored enthusiasts
Nissan refuses to refresh their product line on models that should be their bread and butter (Frontier, Pathfinder, etc.)
Nissan has let its image models stagnate without refreshes for over a decade (GTR, 370Z)

They pretty much deserve to be bankrupted at this point.

Agreed, Nissan kept making the 370Z and bringing almost NOTHING new to the table... The 370Z offers nothing that you cannot find elsewhere.

GTR? Too expensive.. 565-600hp sounds nice, but for the price you can find nicer cars than that.Someone could buy an absolutely epic Corvette ZR1 or Viper ACR at those GTR prices. I love that those have a traditional manual also, I know Dual-Clutch Auto is faster and more efficient, but I love a 6 speed for a more engaged experience.

What? Where else can you find a port injected N/A engine these days?

Not to mention a hydraulically assisted power steering system....