Nissan has recruited from Chrysler LLC the man who had been leading the marketing efforts for the Dodge brand. Fred Deperez will take his spot as Nissan's director and chief marketing manager for Nissan Marketing on Oct. 3. In that role, he will lead lifecycle product marketing efforts for the Versa, Sentra, cube, JUKE and Quest models.

At Chrysler, Deperez also held leadership posts in corporate brand strategy, and global sales and product training as well as global communications for Jeep. Before that, the former U.S. Marine was with Toyota Motor Sales USA.

Nissan spokesman Fred Standish said Fiat wasn't involved in any of the discussions. Standish stressed that the company was committed to stay in the North American truck market. "We are looking at a variety of options," he said.

Steven Landry, Executive Vice President for North American Sales, said the decision on which dealer contracts to reject “was based on a data-driven matrix that assessed a number of key metrics.” The 25 percent of its dealers Chrysler wants to drop account for 14 percent of sales, he said in the statement.