According to Bloomberg, Nissan is the place to be a director for a Japanese automaker. According to a new article, Nissan Motor Company hands its directors close to four times the amount of pay as its rival Toyota and three times as much as what Honda directors bring home. Averaged among all of Nissan's directors, the heads of the company make around US$1.5 million per year, compared to around US$411,150 for Toyota's gurus and US$529,561 for Honda's head honchos. Keep in mind those numbers are based on current conversion rates.

So what gives? For one, Nissan is shacked up with Renault at the moment, giving the company a bit of an international flavor and the pay scales that comes along with that association. However, a bigger factor may be that Toyota and Honda compensate their heads of state in other ways. Toyota, for example, hands out stock options worth around $171,000 in addition to base salary in order to help make up some of the gap.

Despite the massive amounts of cash heading to Nissan's directors, the company can't quite keep up the pace in either profits or sales with its main domestic rivals. The company fell dead last among the big Japanese three in sales for the past year.