Nissan executive vice president Andy Palmer recently tweeted Infiniti president Johan de Nysschen’s confirmation the Q30 premium compact car and the QX30 crossover would be built in the UK (Sunderland) from next year.
Infiniti showed the Q30 Concept at the 2013 Frankfurt motor show.
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According to just-auto‘s Production Life Database (PLDB), the Q30 will be a rival for Daimler’s Mercedes-Benz GLA-Class.
Infiniti Europe revealed the Etherea, a concept version of this additional model, at the Geneva motor show in March 2011. The car at Geneva was more of a crossover than a typical five-door small hatchback. A second design study, this time called ‘Q30 Concept’ followed at the Frankfurt motor show in September 2013.
The production model will use the Daimler platform that underpins the second generation Mercedes B-Class, Nissan and Daimler announced at the Frankfurt motor show in September 2011.
Production of the new car had originally been subcontracted to Magna Steyr, which was to build it at the rate of 50,000-60,000 units per annum. However, Nissan Europe stated in October 2012 that instead, “Infiniti intends to manufacture the vehicle in-house in a European production plant. The company will announce a production location and more product details closer to the start of production”.
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By GlobalDataThe production location was first revealed in December 2012: the model would be made at Nissan’s Sunderland plant in England from 2015, at the rate of 60,000 units a year. Production might also take place in China from 2016.
Also in September 2013, Nissan’s Asia and Oceania operations managing director Allen Lu reportedly let slip the name and build location of a previously unknown future model.
Lu was quoted by the web portal GoAuto.com.au as naming the ‘QX30‘ as an additional vehicle, to be introduced after the launch of the Q30. Build at Sunderland from 2015 is confirmed and it might also be built in China but for now, that remains speculative.
The Q30 is to use the same MFA platform as the Mercedes-Benz A-, B-, CLA- and GLA-Class models, so it seems logical that the QX30 would also be closely based on the GLA crossover. The Audi Q3 would be the QX30’s nearest rival.
“We are building to widen the brand’s offerings, starting with the entry-level Q30 and QX30 to mainly attract the younger customers,” Lu was quoted as telling the Australian media at the Nissan 360 event in southern California.
The QX30 might well be the first vehicle for the Renault-Nissan Alliance and Daimler’s forthcoming Aguascalientes 2 plant in north-central Mexico. This facility was officially announced in June 2014. The new factory will be built in the immediate vicinity of an already existing Nissan plant and will have an annual capacity of 300,000 vehicles when fully ramped up. The first vehicle will be an Infiniti model in 2017, to be followed in 2018 by a Mercedes-Benz (possibly the GLB-Class). The partners named these models only as “next generation compact vehicles” in their June 2014 media release. Aguascalientes 2 is due to reach its full capacity in 2021, Daimler and Renault-Nissan noted in the same press statement.
Speaking at the Detroit show in January 2014, de Nysschen told the media he didn’t see a model below the Q30 until after 2020.
“Johan de Nysschen just said that we’ll build our Q30 premium compact car and QX30 crossover in the UK (Sunderland) next year. I’m proud.”
— Andy Palmer (@NissanAndy) on Twitter recently
