NISSAN is coming to the end of a special week during which it has been celebrating its success in the UK – and showing off some of its latest models.
The company’s Sunderland plant has played host to dozens of journalists who have been invited to the factory in the north-east of England to try out the latest versions of Qashqai, Juke and Note – as well as tour the factory itself to see Qashqais being built.
The event has been entitled Rising Sunderland and there have been several special guests during the week including racing driver Jann Mardenborough, a graduate of Nissan’s rigorous GT Academy training programme.
Mardenborough will be competing in the Blancpain Endurance Series starting at Monza next month where he will race Nissan’s new GT3 race car: the Nissan GT-R Nismo GT3.
Martin and Alex Brundle also dropped in to chat to reporters and give a few lucky members of staff at Nissan’s record-breaking plant the experience of some fast laps of the test track there.
Ex-Formula One driver Martin will be joining his son Alex at the wheel of the Nissan-powered Greaves Motorsport LMP2 prototype at this year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans in June.
Journalists had the chance to get behind the wheel of fantastic Juke/GT-R hybrid, Juke-R, the 2012 model year GT-R and the all-electric Nissan LEAF Nismo RC.
And there was a meaningful message behind all the fast cars and action on the test track: to emphasise just how well Nissan is doing at the moment.
Winning combination
The foreword to a special book presented to all those who attended was written by Jim Wright, Managing Director, Nissan Motor GB Ltd.
He wrote: ‘NMUK makes more than a third of all the cars made in the UK. It is, by far, the most successful British car factory ever.
‘The combination of Japanese quality and production expertise combined with British design, engineering and craftsmanship is proving to be a winning combination with buyers.’
And Darren Cox, General Manager, Nissan Europe, told Nissan Insider: ‘Another purpose of this event is that it is simply a chance for us on the sales and marketing side to say thank you to the factory. It’s the most efficient in Europe, a real success story.
‘And of course at the heart of everything we do is the customer. Our dealer network can be confident that we’re producing quality cars and that we are building the brand.
‘We do things differently at Nissan.’