Nissan banks on new Rogue small SUV to begin US comeback

DETROIT (AP) — There’s a lot riding on the Nissan Rogue, the struggling Japanese automaker’s top-selling vehicle in the hottest part of its second-biggest market, the United States.

The small SUV has been redesigned for the 2021 model year, and a replacement can’t come fast enough for a company battered by falling sales, mounting losses, a financial scandal and a model lineup that many U.S. consumers don’t find appealing. Throw in a global pandemic, and you’ve got a showroom of trouble.

Enter the revamped Rogue, a vehicle that Nissan executives say is the foundation of the company’s U.S. model lineup and critical to its turnaround.

“They do have to hit it right,” said Glenn Mears, owner of Nissan dealerships in Canton and Dover, Ohio. “Everybody has to have that vehicle nowadays. When people are drifting over from cars, that’s what they have to have.”

Last year, Nissan’s U.S. sales were down nearly 10% due largely to an aging model lineup and a tarnished reputation from the 2018 arrest of former star CEO Carlos Ghosn on financial misconduct allegations. Rogue sales were off 15%, in part because it hadn’t been redesigned since 2013, an eternity in a competitive segment that includes the Toyota RAV4 and Honda CR-V.

In 2017 and 2018, Rogue sales reached above 400,000 per year, and the SUV was the fifth-best selling vehicle in America. But last year sales fell to just over 350,000.

The compact SUV ousted the midsize car as the most popular U.S. vehicle segment in 2015 and has been No. 1 ever since. A decade ago, compact SUVs accounted for only 10.5% of U.S. new vehicle sales, but last year that grew to 17.4%, according to data from the Edmunds.com car pricing site. (Edmunds provides content to The Associated Press.)

Company officials unveiled...