Nissan U.K. Plant Builds 3 Millionth Qashqai CUV

Nissan’s most successful model ever, the Nissan Qashqai CUV, has passed the landmark 3 million production units made at its U.K. factory in just over a decade after making its debut.

The achievement by its Sunderland plant in the northeast of England came as the automaker posted record full-year European sales of 762,574 Datsun and Nissan models. The result was a 3.8% increase from 2016.

The Qashqai played a pivotal role in helping Nissan achieve these results as the model had another record-breaking year, with sales growing 1.2%. Sunderland produced a record 346,856 Qashqai units, 265,520 of which were sold in Europe.

“2017 was another record-breaking year for Nissan Europe, and 2018 has started the same way,” Nissan Europe Chairman Paul Willcox says. “The Qashqai’s achievement of reaching (3 million) vehicles produced in 10 years is a significant milestone, while the October launch of the new and eagerly awaited Nissan Leaf has seen record-breaking pre-orders of one every 10 minutes.”

Willcox says Nissan expects to see further records broken in 2018, with total industry sales in Europe and Russia rising about 2% to 20.2 million vehicles. The automaker expects the European market to grow 1% to 18.4 million vehicles and Russia’s to increase 7% to 1.8 million.

Nissan announced in October 2016 that production of an all-new, third-generation Qashqai also will be at Sunderland, which has been in operation for three decades. Production of the next-generation Leaf began at the plant in December. It also makes the Juke CUV and Infiniti Q30 and QX30 premium models.