Nissan plans to continue sourcing the A-star from Maruti Suzuki till 2012 (till the contract expires) and sell the car under the Pixo brand. After Volkswagen picked up a stake in Suzuki Motor Corporation in December last year for a mind-boggling $2.5 billion, it was considered that The Maruti Suzuki-Nissan deal may hit a roadblock.

The stake purchase by Volkswagen in primarily to aim at strengthening its compact car plans for high-growth markets like China and India.

While the Chairman of Maruti Suzuki believes that the company will have to continue sourcing till the term of the contract expires as it doesn't have a replacement for Pixo yet but as the product competes with Volkswagen's Lupo (another compact car) in the European markets, it called for some possibilities of the deal getting into troubles.

The deal with Nissan was signed in the year 2006, after which the company developed a small car for the company from scratch. Maruti Suzuki sells the same car under the A-star badge which was recently recalled due to a problem in the gaskets. But as Volkswagen will take strategic advantage from Suzuki's R&D abilities, it may not want to share the developments with Nissan which makes the chances of the contract getting renewed all the more bleak.