Nissan drops price on seven cars, but not all are smart buys

Automakers make routine price adjustments to respond to market forces or account for increased production costs. In an interesting move, Nissan lowered the prices substantially on seven models to help them appear in search results when shoppers are researching cars online by price.

At first blush, it would appear Nissan is stacking the deck, getting cars into search results that may not appear at dealerships. We have seen it happen before, but that is not the case here. Instead, the company is doing what could be called a price alignment, shifting the official retail price to be much closer to what consumers are actually paying. By then promoting this revised price, it does appear on paper, or on screen in this case, that Nissan has gained some advantages.

Visit our new car buying guide for quick access to the latest advice, Ratings, road tests, and videos.

To better understand how Nissan now measures up, our Auto Price Services team analyzed prices before and after this change, and then compared the seven Nissan models against likely competitors, factoring their retail and transaction prices.

Because the Nissan discounts vary from low to high trims, we focused on the larger discount on high trims for consistency.

When comparing the original and new, lower prices for these Nissans, it is plain that the revised figures would change how the models rank by price when researching.

We anticipate the transaction price will prove similar to what people paid prior to this move. After all, this change was balanced by Nissan reducing incentives on the car. In the end, it might all be a wash.

Looking through the chart, some models seem to be much closer to sales reality. For instance, the Juke is shown to be just $267 above its transaction price. However, despite the hefty $4,400 adjustment to the Armada, transaction prices are still $2,690 less than the new price.