Relationships do not always live up to the hopes of yesteryear. In 2018 Carlos Ghosn, then boss of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance, predicted combined sales of 14m vehicles in 2022. In fact sales may not have hit half that number. Pandemic-era supply-chain snarl-ups are only partly to blame. Another reason was the failure of Mr Ghosn’s plan for a much closer bond between Nissan, the Japanese firm he had rescued from bankruptcy in…