Nissan has revealed that it will build its new C-segment rival to the Volkswagen Golf at its plant in Barcelona, Spain.
The new car, which is because of begin production in July 2014, was to be developed at Nissan’s Sunderland factory. However, Nissan has invested £250million in the Sunderland facility to build a new Infiniti small automobile from 2015 instead.
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The Barcelona factory currently creates commercial automobiles like the NV200 in both conventional and eNV200 electric powered forms, and the Pathfinder SUV and Navara pick-up models.
The new passenger automobile will add 80,000 extra units of annual capacity to the plant, taking overall production at the Barcelona factory to a lot more than 200,000 vehicles. It represents a €110million investment and Nissan declares that 1,000 direct and 3,000 indirect tasks will be created.
As well as its new Golf rival, Nissan will add 24,000 units of additional annual capacity for building the Navara, which represents an additional €14million investment. The plant will also be responsible for building the gearbox for the Nissan leaf and eNV200, which represents a additionally €6million investment.
The overall investment of €130million will be utilized to renovate and modernise the Barcelona plant’s production lines in readiness for the start of the new passenger automobile and electric gearbox production.
However, while Nissan has revealed where its new Golf and Ford focus rival will be built, it stopped short of confirming the new car’s name. Nissan’s executive vice president of product planning, Andy Palmer, told automobile Express: “There is a gap in our range and the idea of the new automobile is to keep our clients within the brand.
“This will catch purchasers moving up from a Juke, who can then get a Qashqai if they need a lot more space. Eventually, the idea is to get them into an Infiniti.”
“The name is yet to be revealed, but Palmer dropped a series of hints. “It won’t utilize the Almera name, you can be sure of that,” he said. “But it will be familiar.”