Four years, six months and 23 days after the first Qashqai small crossover rolled off the Sunderland Plant’s production line in the UK on December 5, 2006, Nissan has passed the 1 million milestone.
The Japanese automaker said the Qashqai is “easily the highest-volume car produced in the UK” adding that no other car in Britain has reached the one million mark in such a short period.
“The Nissan Qashqai has been a phenomenal success since its start of production just four and a half years ago,” said Kevin Fitzpatrick, Nissan Vice President for Manufacturing in the UK.
The company plans to put the landmark vehicle, a silver 2.0-litre diesel TEKNA Qashqai, on display at The O2 Arena in London and then have one lucky person win the special car. Nissan said it will soon announce further details on the competition.
Currently, around 1,200 examples of the Qashqai are built every day at the plant, or about one every minute that the production line is open, with more than 80 percent of the vehicles destined for export to 97 markets across the world.
The Qashqai is the fourth best-selling model in the C-segment, which includes cars like the VW Golf, Renault Megane and Ford Focus, across Europe in the 2010 Fiscal Year. Its top five markets were the UK, Italy, Germany, Spain and France.
