Two decades ago, Ford famously mortgaged virtually every asset at its disposal under then-CEO Alan Mulally’s plan to overhaul its crippled finances. Was it a sign of failure and desperation? Certainly, but it would prove prescient not even two years later when Detroit rivals General Motors and Chrysler both went hat-in-hand to the federal government asking for bailouts.
Just three years later, under now-disgraced former CEO Carlos Ghosn, Nissan was building the 22-story high-rise in Yokohama that has been the company’s home for more than 15 years. And now it might be for sale, Automotive News reports. This time around, it’s not a member of America’s “Big Three,” but Japan’s. Alongside Toyota and Honda, Nissan has spent decades as one of the highest-volume manufacturers on its side of the Pacific.
Nissan’s headquarters is the house that Ghosn built. He announced the move two years before Ford’s comprehensive restructuring platform, and like Mulally, he was originally brought onboard to mount a corporate turnaround. Before he took the reins, Nissan was battling $20 billion in debt and a predominantly unprofitable Japanese lineup. Ghosn’s ascendancy began with Renault’s initial buy-in back in 1999, when he was named COO. By 2001, that first “O” had become an “E.”
Ghosn, who famously fled Japan in what amounted to a giant roadie trunk, maintains to this day that Japan’s prosecution (or to hear him say it, persecution) is motivated by a desire to cast blame on an outsider, and in the process, prevent a French takeover of the beleaguered automaker—what may seem a quaint concern given Nissan’s current financial desperation.
History being cyclical, it seems oddly poetic that the new CEO, Ivan Espinosa, appears poised to divest the company of the very building it calls home in exchange for a cash injection that could amount to more than $650 million. Property sales alone won’t erase Nissan’s debt, but they would ease pressure on the company’s staggering operating costs. Nissan lost $4.5 billion in the last quarter of its 2024 fiscal year alone—its second-largest drop in the past 25 years.
An audit of assets it has available for liquidation put Nissan’s headquarters building on the bean-counters’ radar, and it’s certainly not alone. According to AN, the company is eyeballing three domestic factories for potential closure, and a downsizing of its Tochigi assembly and testing facility has apparently not been ruled out. When asked for comment on the report, a Nissan America representative told The Drive that “Nissan is considering all possibilities to recover its business performance, but there are no specifics to share at this time.”
Update 3:00 p.m. Eastern: Added comment from Nissan Americas spokesperson.
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Byron is one of those weird car people who has never owned an automatic transmission. Born in the DMV but Midwestern at heart, he lives outside of Detroit with his wife, two cats, a Miata, a Wrangler, and a Blackwing.
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