Nissan will show the Qazana concept at Geneva, a show car providing a good indication of the, as yet unnamed, compact car that will be produced at the Nissan Sunderland plant from 2010.
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Nissan says the new model will safeguard around 1,100 jobs at the Sunderland plant where it recently announced 1,200 redundancies.
Described as a small Crossover, Nissan says Qazana has been conceived to challenge conventional wisdom about what buyers of small five-door cars should expect.
The design is dominated by large, wide wheel arches and a lower shape which Nissan says gives a ‘feeling of strength, while the upper body is dynamic, assertive and sporty’.
Qazana is a five-door, with the rear doors opening forwards once the front doors have been opened, in the style of so-called ‘suicide doors’.
Trial builds of the production car will begin in early 2010 before its introduction on the Micra/Note line. There it will take up manufacturing capacity created when production of the current version of Micra ends later that same year (the successor Micra will be built in India).
The new model has been designed and developed in the UK and represents around GBP57m of investment.
Its arrival takes the total investment by Nissan in the Sunderland plant to around GBP2.5bn since 1984.
Trevor Mann, Nissan Senior Vice President for Manufacturing in Europe, commented: “The difficulties currently facing the car industry have been widely documented, and Nissan has not been immune.
“As a result we have had to make some difficult decisions, but the reason we have done so is to secure a long and positive future for the plant. Qazana points the way to that future and gives an indication of the unique and exciting car we will be producing in Sunderland next year.”
