A quick note on the manufacturing stuff too: JLR, of course, has production plants at both Halewood and Solihull. The Castle Bromwich facility was, sadly, closed in May this year, but output from all three of JLR’s sites in 2023 was an impressive 238,422 cars.
There are also plans under way for new electric models, with a battery-powered Range Rover due soon, and a four-door electric Jaguar following not long after, so this is not a company that’s standing still. And it remains a brand – and an array of products – that the UK can and should be very proud of.
Nissan Qashqai
We’ve already mentioned the Qashqai, but before we talk about why this rather lovely e-Power test car proves to be such a hit, let’s put Nissan’s success and manufacturing productivity into context.
Poster child of the crossover era, the Qashqai and its equally genre-defining sibling, the Nissan Juke, are both straight out of the Sunderland plant. You thought BMW’s Cowley figures were impressive? Nissan’s Sunderland plant produced 325,218 vehicles in 2023 – nearly 88,000 more vehicles than were churned out at Cowley.
During that year, the Nissan Leaf was also in production alongside the Juke and Qashqai, but that came to an end earlier this year to allow Nissan to tool up for the start of production of its forthcoming new electric cars.
They really are a phenomenon, Nissan’s crossovers. We motoring hacks might roll our eyes at the rash of SUV-ish cars that have appeared in the wake of Nissan’s decades-long mic drop – which started when the original Qashqai arrived in 2006.
But as I sit in the rather lovely Alcantara-clad cabin and whir smoothly around courtesy of the clever e-Power drivetrain that arrived with the third-generation Qashqai in 2021, it’s not hard to see why it’s such a perennial favourite.
It’s solid, comfortable, dependable, efficient and a completely known quantity. Yet the Qashqai has never felt boring and beige, which is its real magic.
