The Nissan stand at the Chicago Auto Show sits across from the Toyota stand. A Nissan Armada SUV is attached to a 28-foot Sundancer cabin cruiser, weighing in at 7,500 pounds. The boat dwarfs the SUV, built on the same platform as the Nissan Titan pickup.
Just across a narrow strip of carpeting is the Toyota stand, where a Tundra pickup is attached to a much smaller boat, a 19-foot Nitro performance bass fishing boat, weighing about 3,200 pounds.
Score one small victory for Nissan -- a bigger boat on an auto show display -- in what promises to be a bruising battle in the 2008 full-sized pickup market.
With Toyota's redesigned pickup just arriving in the market, Larry Dominique, vice president of product planning for Nissan North America Inc., remains optimistic.
"We believe that Toyota coming in with $140 million in advertising is going to get more Japanese nameplate shoppers" into the pickup market, he said. "Titan sales should be up."
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