Earlier the Ghandhara group had two separate companies for trucks/buses and cars: namely Ghandhara Nissan Diesel Limited (GNDL) and Ghandhara Nissan Limited (GNL) respectively.
GNL introduced the locally assembled Sunny in 1997. At that time the local car market wasn't as upbeat as it is today. All the manufacturers had excess unutilized capacities. So Sunny's sales were dismal. And they stopped the production of Sunny after two years. Moreover, the financial position of both GNL and GNDL became very bad. Both the companies were on the verge of bankruptcy. They didn't even have the working capital to run their plant.
When the size of car market increased from 35 / 40k units in 90s to 100k units in 2002-03, GNL and GNDL came up with a restructuring plan. GNDL was merged into GNL. Financing was obtained from banks and the company got working again. They leased out portions of their car-assembly plant to Sigma Motors (for assembly of Land Rover) and Nexus Autos (for assembly of Chevrolet). In addition, they have also reintroduced the Nissan line-up in Pakistan and may go for local assembly of Sunny after sometime as well.
Nissan Sunny is a very successful car in Middle East. The reason it couldn't creat a market for itself in Pakistan was the financial troubles of GNL, due to which it wasn't marketed properly.