Initial sales of some of the industry’s most-watched new products are off to an embarrassingly slow start. Nissan’s full size Titan pickup, Armada SUV, and Quest minivan - all being produced at the brand new Canton, Mississippi plant - have missed the mark when it comes to sales. All three vehicles were meant to lift Nissan North America sales to record heights and fuel the continued “Nissan Revival” after its near-brush with bankruptcy.

Nissan originally targeted around 100,000 sales annually for its Titan truck, a figure which many in the industry considered perhaps overly prudent. Yet, after a few months of being on sale, the Titan is rang in around 5,300 units per month. At that pace, Nissan is on track to sell around 64,000 Titans per year. Nissan’s miscalculation of the market’s acceptance of the Titan has lead to inventories in excess of a 100 days’ supply. This is well above the industry average of around half that figure.

The Armada SUV, which went on sale before the Titan last fall, also is seeing inventories above a 100 days’ supply. Nissan has already tweaked the truck’s color scheme in response to consumer demands, but the company is not all that worried about the rising amount of Armadas and Titans piling up on dealer lots.

“We’re not uncomfortable with inventories creeping up in April and May because we’re going into our best selling months,” Nissan’s VP of sales and marketing told Detroit News. In fact, according to DN, sales of Armada and Titan during the first ten days of May were up 25 percent over early April returns.

The Quest minivan has been stung by mixed reviews in automotive magazines and strong sales of the also-new Toyota Sienna. The minivan sector as a whole has also proven to be fairly weak, with Ford Motor Company’s new minivans also stumbling out of the gate. The Quest’s quirky styling inside and out has turned off its fair share of customers, and attracted more affluent buyers than Nissan originally expected. According to media reports, sales of Quest’s higher end models have made up a larger share of the model’s total mix than Nissan predicted. As such, Nissan is offering its unique “Skyview” sunroof on the midgrade SL models and is making a dark color-scheme available for the interior at the requests of owners with children.

Marketing has also taken its share of the blame for all three models’ poor returns. For the Quest, it may come down to a simple case of not knowing what the target market is for such a uniquely styled vehicle. For Titan and Armada, they face quite an uphill battle of trying to gain traction in a segment that is known as the last stronghold of the American carmakers, and one with fiercely loyal owners. As such, Nissan’s marketing, or lack thereof, has simply been drowned out. In response, Nissan is upping the marketing mix of the Titan, Armada, and Quest even as it continues the launch of the new Infiniti QX56 and restyled Altima sedan. So far, sales figures from May and June seem to signal better days ahead. The Titan, helped by a new $1000 incentives package from Nissan, pulled in sales of over 7000 units in June.