Ex-Jeep leader Christian Meuner to lead Nissan USA

Nissan, despairing for a transformational leader, has chosen former Jeep leader Christian Meunier to lead its American division, according to Automotive News. (Infiniti is Nissan’s long-struggling luxury brand.)

One industry insider described Nissan’s American operations as being full of politics and infighting, and generally unable to make information-based decisions. Nissan as a company has been struggling in recent years, and recently claimed it was around two years from dissolution if they were unable to turn around.

Nissan first entered the United States under the Datsun name; Datsun was the name of one of its cars. Their name switch confused many customers, though it brought the American division into line with the rest of the world, and lost a good deal of the goodwill brought by the highly regarded Datsun 240Z and 280Z sporty cars.

Meunier was working at Mercedes USA in Montvale, New Jersey, as head of product planning and marketing for crossovers and SUVs in the United States, when he was hired away to Nissan Europe to be the general manager for marketing and sales. He rose through the ranks at Nissan from 2002 to 2019, ending up as the global head of Infiniti when FCA plucked him away to become the global head of Jeep. He ran Jeep from May 2019 until 2023, when he left the company and apparently retired. His LinkedIn profile still shows him as being CEO of Jeep.