Which major car brand will be the first to disappear this year? There are several contenders, including Chrysler and Dodge and VW. But it may be Nissan that goes the way of Pontiac and Plymouth and Oldsmobile first.

Moody’s –  which ranks the creditworthiness of corporate borrowers – has downgraded Nissan’s to “junk,”  reports Reuters. Senior analyst Dean Enjo cited “risks associated with the implementation of its new restructuring plan, the renewal of its aging product range and global trade policies” as the main reasons for the downgrading, as well as the probability of “negative cash flow” for the rest of this year.

In sum, it does not look good for Nissan. But it isn’t as bad as it is for Chrysler and Dodge. Or VW, for that matter. 

Chrysler is in worse shape than Pontiac was back in 2010, the final year for that brand – because there’s only one 2025 Chrysler, the Pacifica minivan. And sales of that one model declined to just 59,273 examples last year from 73,845 the previous year. The year before Pontiac went to that great boneyard in the sky, it sold 87,171 G6s – which were the last new Pontiacs sold before the end came the following year. Pontiac also had a full lineup of other models before that final year (2010) including the G3, G5 and G8 as well as the Solstice sports car and the Torrent and Vibe crossovers.

How about Dodge?

It’s almost March of 2025 and only a few thousand of the electric devices made to look like the Charger that’s been absent from the lineup since the end of 2023 have been shipped to dealers. Only a small handful of journalists have been allowed more than brief and tightly controlled test drives; the usual week-long unsupervised test drives have not been scheduled (at least not for this journalist as well as others of my acquaintance who by now would normally have had a chance to spend time alone with a 2025 model year vehicle that was supposed to have been available at dealerships in the fall of 2024).

The reason why, apparently, is that while tens of thousands of Charger devices have been manufactured, only a relative few have been shipped – reportedly because of charging problems. They sit at depots because they won’t move under their own power, having bricked themselves. The word is that techs have been sent to individually de-brick the devices, one at a time and this takes time. Apparently, it gets worse in that once the devices are put into “shipping mode” to be transported from the depot to the dealer, they stay in “shipping mode.” Upon arrival, they are inert – and so cannot be sold.

It is unlikely they’ll sell regardless as the “market” for devices is kind of like the “market” for Playboy magazine after it began featuring morbidly obese women such as the rapper Lizzo and “trans” men pretending to be women such as Ines Rau.

And – yes- Playboy actually did both.

Dodge and devices go together like anchovies and ice cream. But there is a chance that the 2025 Charger wont be the last Dodge because a version of it will be available with an engine rather than a battery and motors. But it might not be enough to keep Dodge going because of the losses that will be incurred not selling the devices and because the engine that will be offered in the body of that device is a six rather than a V8 and a Charger without a V8 is a lot like steak without the meat.

VW is in a similar predicament, for similar reasons.

“Electrification” has transformed the brand from one that sold cars lots of people could afford to devices only a handful of rich liberals want. The worst example of this being the 2025 ID Buzz, which is a device made to look like the classic VW hippie van of the ’60s that has almost nothing in common with it except that it looks like it. Hippies drove those old vans because they were cheap – and being based on Beetle mechanicals, easy (and cheap) for Hippies to fix. The ID Buzz lists for $59,995 to start – which assures only a handful of aging ex-Hippies wit lots of disposable wealth will be able to afford one.

VW has already cancelled the U.S. debut of its ID 7 device because it wanted to avoid the embarrassment of these devices gathering dust at dealerships. But the losses can’t be hidden. VW is dying and the only way it can recover is to abandon its coerced “commitment” to devices (part of the penance it had to pay for selling what were claimed to be unclean diesels but which were in fact much too efficient and affordable vs. devices to be allowed to remain on the market as an alternative and a point of comparison).

Mercedes isn’t doing well, either – also on account of trying to sell devices rather than vehicles. It turns out most people aren’t interested much in paying tens of thousands more for a device just because it says “Mercedes” rather than Hyundai.

But Nissan isn’t as device-afflicted. The Leaf was the only device it sold until the appearance of the Ariya device in 2023. It’s not those two devices that are dragging Nissan into the abyss. It is the absence of competitive/desirable vehicles in its lineup. Models such as the Altima sedan – when it was available with a V6 rather than a four. And the Maxima, when it came standard with a V6 and a manual and cost thousands less than a BMW.

An affordable small pick-up in its lineup would do wonders for Nissan’s health but all it has at the moment is the almost full-sized Frontier that costs twice as much as a compact-sized Frontier once sold for.

The good news is that Nissan’s  probably more fixable than Chrysler, Dodge and VW. The bad news is that there’s not much time to turn things around. Once a brand begins to emit the smell of imminent death, people assume the inevitable and that ends up resulting in just that.

The fix is easy – but hard. Dump the devices. And the CVTs. Announce a return to manufacturing the kinds of vehicles – and engines and transmissions – that made Nissan a desirable brand. Inexpensive, fun and a little bit cocky, too. Maybe even bring back Datsun – a brand name that conjures great memories that could make some new ones, too.     

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