Yet Ghosn has gone to lengths to stress how attractive he finds GM.
For months, Ghosn has dropped hints that he was looking for a third company to add to the Renault-Nissan alliance, formed in 1999 when the French company took management control of the struggling Japanese carmaker.
Given that there are only two independent American companies, GM and Ford, which is also going through a revamping, Ghosn's interest in GM seems logical.
Ghosn, in an interview in New York this week, said that his interest reflected an endorsement of GM despite its financial problems and dwindling market share.
"If I believed that this was a lost battle, why would I be in it?" he said.
Earlier on Friday, Ghosn stressed that he was in no rush to define the parameters of an alliance, which could involve the companies' engineering, manufacturing and design operations.
"We don't need anything to happen now or tomorrow," Ghosn told reporters during a visit to Nissan's technical center in Farmington Hills, Michigan, a suburb northwest of Detroit.
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