Partner Article

New model boosts Nissan's fortunes

Nissan have reported that sales of the Sunderland-built Qashqai are rocketing, despite the current state of the European car market.

Sales of the 4x4 family car rose by more than 23% in the last year.

Spokeswoman Gabi Whitfield said: “Qashqai is our shining star.”

Across the continent, the rise was even more pronounced. The firm sold 12,463 Qashqais and 3,275 Qashqai+2s Europe-wide last month, up from 10,300 in the same month last year.

The rise helped Nissan increase its share of the UK car market from 2.6% to more than 3.2% last month.

Ms Whitfield said: “We all know the market is declining and our focus is on making sure we hold on to, or even increase, our market share. The success of Qashqai and Qashqai+2 is a huge, huge part of that.”

Nissan will re-introduce weekend working at Sunderland from tomorrow as the car market shows its first signs of recovery. This will come as a massive relief to workers at the factory, as well as the many Wearside businesses in the supply chain.

The success of car scrappage schemes in Europe has increased demand dramatically, including a 40% rise in sales in Germany.

“Nissan has extended the UK Government’s forthcoming scrappage scheme from cars over 10 years old to any older than eight years - provided they are traded in against a car built on Wearside,” Ms Whitfield added. “We believe we have increased the potential market by another 200,000 possible buyers and we want to encourage them into buying a British-built car from our Sunderland plant.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .