Nissan
Nissan are a Japanese car maker and they were one of the fist Japanese makers to make cars available for sale in North America. Unlike their competitors who focused solely on making their cars cheap, Nissan made an effort to make their cars sporty. This helped Nissan to stand out from the other Japanese car makers and build a reputation as the maker of inexpensive sports cars.
Although most people don't realize it Nissan are actually one of the oldest car makers in the world. In the early days they built mostly trucks for the Japanese market, mainly because there was virtually no market for private cars at the time. A big part of the company's production was on behalf of the military as they were by far the biggest buyer of vehicles in Japan at the time. After the Second World War there was no longer a market for military vehicles so Nissan had to switch over to building cars for private consumers. Like all of the Japanese manufacturers at the time the cars they built were small and inexpensive.
It was during the fifties that Nissan decided to start selling cars outside of Japan. Initially the cars were sold under the name Datsun. That was actually the name of the company that built the cars. Nissan was the name of the holding company that owned Datsun. Eventually it was decided that the cars would be sold under the Nissan name. Like all of the Japanese manufacturers when Nissan entered foreign markets it was selling smaller cheaper cars than were being produced locally. However unlike the other Japanese companies Nissan always focused on making their cars appear sporty. This gave Nissan a different reputation than their competitors received. While most early Japanese models where considered a bit of a joke because of their small size and rather unattractive appearance. Nissan had a reputation for building inexpensive sports cars.
Over the years Nissan has expanded their product line and now offer cars in all categories. They even have a luxury car division called Infiniti. This has helped Nissan to grow into one of the largest car makers in the world. Although they are in clear third place amongst Japanese makers they are still one of the largest in the world. Despite the large size of the company for a number of years they were not profitable and this lead to some real concerns about their future. In the end a partnership agreement was signed with Renault. As a result of the agreement Renault basically ended up running the company and they reorganized the way the company was run. This resulted in what many observers consider to be one of the most impressive turn arounds that any company has ever had. They went from losing several billion dollars a year to making a profit of several billion dollars in less than five years. Now Nissan is one of the most financially stable of all car makers.