Nissan’s global restructuring plan is claiming another victim. Earlier this year, the automaker announced it would shutter its CIVAC plant in Cuernavaca, Mexico, consolidating production at its Aguascalientes facilities. Now, the company’s joint-venture COMPAS plant in Aguascalientes—the one it shares with Mercedes-Benz—is also on borrowed time.
Brian Brockman, Nissan’s vice president of communications for the Americas, confirmed to Wards Auto that the COMPAS plant will close “in the near future.” While he stopped short of giving a specific date, production of the Infiniti QX50 and QX55 will wrap up this November. Mercedes-Benz, however, will keep the lights on a bit longer, continuing to assemble the GLB until May 2026.
It’s an unceremonious end for a factory that was once a symbol of collaboration. Opened in 2017, the COMPAS (Cooperation Manufacturing Plant Aguascalientes) facility was a high-profile joint venture between Nissan and Mercedes, envisioned as a flexible manufacturing hub for both brands’ compact luxury crossovers and sedans. But the partnership gradually unraveled as the Infiniti models failed to gain traction and Mercedes quietly pulled the plug on the A-Class in the U.S. market.
Sales numbers tell the story: through the first nine months of the year, Infiniti managed to sell just 4,994 QX50s in the United States—a drop of 36.6 percent compared to last year. The QX55, the sleeker coupe sibling, found only 1,931 buyers. Those figures hardly justify a dedicated assembly line.
According to Brockman, the closure “is part of a previously announced plan and reflects broader strategic shifts within the company.” That’s corporate shorthand for Nissan’s Re:Nissan recovery plan, a multi-year restructuring effort aimed at reducing global capacity and tightening the company’s focus. The initiative has already led to the closure of the Oppama plant in Japan and could claim up to seven manufacturing facilities worldwide.
The math is simple but brutal: Nissan wants to trim annual production capacity from 3.5 million vehicles to around 2.5 million while pushing factory utilization to near 100 percent. Fewer plants, but fuller ones.
The timing, however, is rough. Nissan recently revised its financial outlook for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2026, painting a picture of cautious progress amid continued turbulence. The company now expects an operating loss of ¥30 billion ($195 million) for the first half of the year—a major improvement from earlier forecasts of a ¥180 billion ($1.17 billion) shortfall. But the full-year outlook remains grim: projected revenues of ¥11.7 trillion ($76 billion) paired with a net loss of ¥275 billion ($1.79 billion).
The company cites the usual suspects—supply chain disruptions, currency fluctuations, tariffs, and geopolitical uncertainty—as key headwinds.
For Infiniti, the end of production at COMPAS leaves big questions about its future manufacturing footprint. The brand has struggled for years to define its identity and justify its existence in a crowded luxury segment increasingly dominated by German and Korean rivals. With the QX50 and QX55 gone, Infiniti’s lineup looks thinner than ever.
As the COMPAS plant winds down, it’s hard not to see it as a cautionary tale: a bold alliance between two automakers that promised synergy but delivered little more than shared losses.
Source: Nissan, Wards Auto