Renault and Nissan announced that the two companies sold a combined 5,785,231 units in 2004, up 8.0% over 2003. Nissan and Renault sold a total of 3,295,830 and 2,489,401 vehicles, respectively. The Renault-Nissan Alliance global market share came to 9.6% (4.1% for the Renault group and 5.5% for Nissan), ranking among the world's top four global automakers in terms of unit sales. The Alliance continued to benefit from the geographical complementarities of both companies.
The Renault group sold 2,308,728 vehicles under the Renault brand (up 4.5%), 85,046 vehicles under the Renault Samsung Motors nameplate (down 23.7%) and 95,627 Dacia-branded vehicles (up 39.1%).
Cooperation and synergies within the Alliance are also on the increase. In 2004, the Renault group and Nissan each launched two new models based on the common Alliance B platform, Renault Modus and Dacia Logan (Logan uses a derivative of this platform), Nissan's all-new Tiida and Tiida Latio. Modus was the first Renault vehicle to use this platform, while Nissan started production on it in 2002 with the March and Cube.
In 2004, Nissan also launched Lafesta, a new minivan based on the common C platform. It is the first Nissan vehicle developed on the common C platform, while Renault released Mégane on this platform in 2002. Mégane was again the top-selling car in Western Europe for the second consecutive year in 2004, with 702,750 units sold.
Another example of successful cooperation within the Renault-Nissan Alliance in 2004 is the development of the first common engines. Application of the two newly developed engines, the 1.5-liter HR15DE (S2G) and the 2.0-liter MR20DE (M1G) engines started with Nissan Tiida / Tiida Latio and Lafesta respectively. The Tiida now ranks among the three top-selling models in Japan.
