Tokyo, May 12 (IANS): Japanese automobile manufacturer Nissan Motor plans to acquire a more than 30 percent stake of Mitsubishi Motors with 200 billion yen ($1 billion).

Directors of both companies are scheduled to meet on Thursday to begin negotiations on the operation, EFE news reported.

According to officials, if the alliance takes place, Nissan would have a majority stake in Mitsubishi Motors, ahead of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries which currently owns 20 percent.

With this acquisition, Nissan seeks to reinforce the activities of Mitsubishi and clean the company's image after it was affected by the scandal of falsified fuel efficiency data of several of its small vehicles.

Mitsubishi has recently admitted that since 1991 the company has used irregular methods for testing the energy efficiency of several models so that the test results in fuel consumption were exaggerated by 10 percent.

The manipulation affects at least 625,000 cars sold in Japan although the figure could rise according to the latest details of the case revealed by the company.