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Dacia Duster to spawn inexpensive Nissan Terrano, will we get it?

When going to overseas auto shows, one can't help but spend an inordinate amount of time eyeballing forbidden automotive fruit. It's often of the seriously rare, criminally powerful and six- or seven-digit variety. But more often than one might think, the genuinely affordable overseas hero makes us swoon, too. So it is with the Dacia/Renault Duster, the cheap-as-chips, hard-wearing utility vehicle. We've often thought that its basic, rugged charms would play well in the US if saddled with a low enough price tag, but we've never seen much of a window for that to actually come true.
But now, Autocar India is reporting that Nissan will flex its alliance with Renault to spin off a Duster of its own, one that exhumes the Terrano nameplate, a moniker once used for overseas versions of the first- and second-generation Pathfinder. The new model will feature unique sheetmetal to give it a familial look, but the interior will be the same, and we expect the same goes for the powertrain, meaning there will be a range of gasoline and diesel four-cylinder engines with both manual and automatic gearboxes and front- or all-wheel drive.
So, does that mean we'll get a Nissan version of the Duster-based Terrano to call our own? Sadly, almost certainly not. Company spokesman Dan Bedore tells Autoblog flatly, "There are no plans to bring this model to the US." Bummer. Even if it isn't ultimately as capable as the larger, long-in-the-tooth Xterra (it's more on par with the now departed Canadian-market X-Trail), we think the Duster's archetypal SUV looks and low cost barrier would win it plenty of fans in our market. Our guess is that redesigning the model to meet US regulations (crash, emissions, lighting, etc.) would be prohibitively expensive, and the Dacia/Renault model is built in some pretty distant facilities - Brazil, India, Romania and Russia among them - making the business case harder still.

Nissan recalls 3,065 Pathfinders for transmission fluid leak

Nissan is recalling 3,065 units of the 2013 Pathfinder equipped with the CVT, due to a potential transmission fluid leak. On crossovers built from April 18, 2012 to October 3,2012 "inadequate clamping force" on the hose connected to the internal oil cooler can cause the hose to come loose and let fluid escape. A severe loss of fluid can cause the transmission to stop working properly.
The recall is the result of a safety investigation begun last September, when it was thought a recall could involve 110,000 units of the Pathfinder and Infiniti JX35. Asked for comment about how such a large number of vehicles potentially involved could end up with just 3,065 being recalled, Nissan rep Steve Yaeger told Autoblog that Nissan initiated a service campaign for the issue last year - a service campaign notifies owners to take their vehicles to the dealer for repair of "what is generally not a safety issue" - and that there was a "production improvement" that addressed the clamping issue. The service campaign included the vehicles being recalled, but the recall is limited to just those vehicles that were built before the production-line fix.
Nissan will begin informing affected owners next month, at which time owners can take their vehicles to dealers to have the hose clamp repaired. The press release below from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has more information.

Carlos Ghosn returns as president of ACEA

The European Automobile Manufacturers' Association (abbreviated ACEA in French) is an industry group representing all the biggest automakers in Europe, representing their common interests on the world stage. And as such it needs a leader, figurehead and mouthpiece to serve as its president, and for the second time the association's board of directors has chosen Carlos Ghosn.
Now if you're recognizing Ghosn as the CEO of Nissan and wondering what that has to do with European cars, it's not because Nissan manufactures much in Europe. In fact, it only operates has a handful of locations in Europe: one in the UK, one in Barcelona and one in St Petersburg. But you'd be wise to recall that Ghosn also serves as CEO of Renault, one of the biggest players in European automobile manufacturing. He also sits on the boards at Russian automaker AvtoVAZ (of which Renault owns 25 percent) and of his native Brazil's Banco Itaú, not to mention the advisory councils of a handful of universities - two of them from his ancestral hometown of Beirut. He previously served as president of ACEA in 2009, and was re-elected to replace outgoing PSA chairman Philippe Varin.
Alongside Renault, ACEA membership includes BMW, Daimler, Fiat, Jaguar Land Rover, PSA Peugeot Citroën, Volkswagen and Volvo, along with the European divisions of Ford, General Motors, Hyundai and Toyota, as well as a handful of truck manufacturers.