Nissan North America is elbowing into the year-end sales event convention, joining sibling luxury brand Infiniti, Toyota, Honda, and other automakers with offers ranging from 0% financing to hood cash to get those dealership doors swinging both ways, as singer Adam Lambert might put it.

Nissan's "A to Z Year-End Sales Event" offers the whole range of Nissan vehicles, from Altman to the 370Z, with offers ranging from a $199-a-month lease for 39 months on the 2010 Nissan Altman to exclusive Thanksgiving weekend cash back offers of $1,000 on 2009 Maximas and $500 on 2010 Altimas.

The event, running through Jan. 3, is benefiting from a national advertising push on cable networks including Bravo, Comedy Central, Discovery, ESPN, ESPN2, Food Network, FX, HGTV, MSNBC, Sci-Fi, The History Channel, TBS, TNT and USA. The company says the effort -- via Nissan's dealership agency, Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.-based Zimmerman -- will include prime-time TV, and interactive elements including banner ads, home page takeovers, and paid search. There will also be Hispanic TV and radio and point-of-purchase elements.

Kelley Blue Book's latest Market Intelligence survey of in-market new-car shoppers suggests that new-car buyers are ready, willing and able -- but the onus is on automakers to tell them that the deals are coming to the dance. The firm -- which focused on the big post-Thanksgiving shopping day -- says that if dealerships were empty on Black Friday, it was due to weak automaker communications.

The firm says that 55% of the 121 in-market new-car shoppers polled for the study said they were "somewhat likely," and only 12% said they were very/extremely likely to buy a car on the day after Thanksgiving.

When asked if available incentives on Black Friday would affect their purchase time frame, 32% of in-market new-car shoppers said they would definitely purchase a new car sooner than they had planned. Sixty-five percent said they would consider purchasing a vehicle sooner if additional Black Friday auto discounts and incentives were available, per the firm.

But only 4% of respondents said they were aware of discounts and planned to take advantage of them to purchase a new vehicle on Black Friday. Sixty-seven percent said they weren't aware of such offers.

Among those who said they were definitely not going to buy new wheels on Black Friday, 35% said they are waiting on better incentives and discounts, and 17% said the incentives and discounts they are aware of don't cut it.

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