Nissan offers buyouts to U.S. design staff

DETROIT (Reuters) - Nissan Motor Co (7201.T: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), Japan's third-largest automaker, is offering buyouts to about 100 of its designers in California and Michigan as part of a revamp of its global vehicle design process, a spokesman said on Thursday.

Nissan, 44 percent owned by France's Renault (RENA.PA: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), expects about 12 employees will take the buyout offers, said Fred Standish, a spokesman for Nissan's U.S. operations based in Nashville, Tennessee.

The buyout offers apply to workers at Nissan operations in Farmington Hills, Michigan and San Diego and correspond with a global effort by the Japanese automaker to cut costs and "gain some efficiencies" in its design work, Standish said.

As a result of the review, Nissan's remaining U.S.-based designers will move to "conceptual" work earlier in the process of building a new vehicle, he said.

"We are undertaking a global review of our design operations and that's been going on for a while," he said.

Standish said Nissan expected most of those accepting the buyouts would be in the older and larger San Diego studio, which employs more staff than the Michigan design operation.

Nissan sales of cars and light trucks were up 4.5 percent in 2007 from a year earlier, giving it a share of almost 7 percent of the U.S. market. It ranks as the No. 6 automaker in terms of U.S. market share.