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YOKOHAMA, Japan, June 25 (Reuters) - Nissan Motor Co (nasdaq: NSANY - news - people ) chief executive Carlos Ghosn said that industrywide sales in the United States could fall well below 15 million vehicles this year and that he expected steel firms to launch another round of price hike talks.

Ghosn also told a news conference after the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting that the carmaker would likely raise prices in Japan to offset a surge in the price of steel and other raw materials.

Nissan and other car makers are grappling with a weak U.S. market, where many analysts have also predicted sales would fall below 15 million units this year as high gasoline prices and a sluggish economy cut into demand. Read the rest of this entry »

From Leftlanenews.com:

The all-new Nissan 370Z is still a good six months away from an official reveal, but thanks to our illustration and now a shot of the car from a presentation, we shouldn’t be too surprised when the car finally takes its place on the Nissan stand. As previously speculated, the newest Z will receive a headlight treatment similar to the design seen on the 2009 Maxima.

Overall, the 370Z — which is being developed under the code name C53D — appears to keep the same general shape as the current 350Z. However, the front headlights — which will reportedly use LEDs — are much more dramatic than the current car’s and can be clearly seen in our illustration and the leaked image. The rear also seems to be a bit stubbier, with a sharper crease along the trailing edge of the hatch.

The 370Z is expected to use the same VQ37VHR powerplant found in the Infiniti G37 — a V6 displacing 3.7L — delivering at least 330 horsepower.

In December of 2006, Nissan product planning VP Larry Dominique said the next-generation Z would “have considerably more performance than the current model and give a visual stimulus beyond today’s Z.” He said it would continue to deliver on the promise of being attainable to a wide range of people.

Expect to see the all-new Z at the 2008 Los Angeles Auto Show in November.

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CASCAIS, Portugal — Taking a page from Mazda R&D, Nissan’s top designer hung a “sculpture” today on the wall of a meeting room at the company’s Nissan 360 global product review: a sculpture that hints at the design of the next-generation Nissan Z.

When Mazda did it in the 1980s at its North American design studio in Irvine, the joke was that the sculpture was really a life-size copy of the hood and driver-side fender of a top-secret car sports car that everyone was speculating about.

The Mazda Miata was finally put into production almost two years after designer Tom Matano and his team hung their “sculpture,” and he laughed for years as he gleefully recounted how hundreds of vendors and automotive journalists had visited the R&D facility without ever noticing that the secret roadster they were obsessing over had been hanging there in plain sight all that time.

Nissan Design Chief Shiro Nakamura wasn’t as secretive as Matano — he blatantly pointed out his wall hanging to a group of 80 North American automotive journalists gathered in the hotel meeting room in this costal resort town about 17 miles west of Lisbon.

It represented, he said, a new Nissan that people would be seeing more of in the fall.

With that clue as a starter, the wall most of us had ignored during an hour-long reception before Nakamura gave his pre-dinner speech took on new dimensions — three dimensions, to be exact.

Despite the opaque fabric covering that blurred and softened the shape, it quickly became apparent that the car he was hinting at was, in all likelihood, the new Z due next year.

Nakamura also showed off a crimson red design study that he said contained elements of future design treatments for Nissan’s upscale Infiniti division.