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And the Best-Selling British-Built Car in the UK in 2022 Was… a Crossover

Brits love crossovers so much that the best-selling locally-built car last year in the United Kingdom was the Nissan Qashqai. Marketed on the left side of the pond as the Rogue Sport, the compact high-rider has helped the Japanese company top the annual sales chart for the first time ever.
Nissan Qashqai 9 photos
Photo: Nissan
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Designed in Paddington, engineered in Cranfield, and built in Sunderland, the Nissan Qashqai marketed in the UK accounted for 42,704 sales throughout the year, out of which 3,506 in December alone. The figures were released by the Society of Motor Manufacturers & Traders, and quoted by Nissan in the official press release.

With its compact footprint and higher driving position, the first generation Qashqai broke the mold for how a mass-market vehicle should look and feel – it was a revolutionary ‘crossover’ design,” said the brand’s VP of Design at Paddington, Mat Weaver. “It’s difficult to believe now that some industry observers were skeptical about Qashqai’s chances of success when it first arrived back in 2007. Yet, in 2023, crossovers are now the dominant car design trend with almost all manufacturers now featuring them in their line-up.

In order to celebrate the model’s achievement, Nissan has dressed a Qashqai in gold, with a contrasting black roof and side mirror casings, and the usual amount of chrome trim on the outside. The vehicle in question used the Sunderland facility as its own catwalk, as it had its pictures taken throughout the site, which is home to 6,000 employees, proudly wearing an exclusive license plate too. According to Nissan, the Qashqai represents one in five cars built in Britain since its original launch locally back in 2007. Since then, almost 3.8-million copies came to life in Sunderland, on two assembly lines.

We’ve built three generations of the ground-breaking Qashqai in the north-east, and it has become the mainstay of production here for 16 years,” commented the automaker’s Vice President of Nissan Motor Manufacturing UK, Alan Johnson. “We’re incredibly proud of its success, and it’s great to see that our passion for building it is shared by car buyers across the UK and Europe, who love its combination of practicality, exciting design, unique technology, and electrified efficiency.

Nissan’s Qashqai is offered in the Visia, Acenta Premium, N-Connecta, Tekna, and Tekna+ trim levels in the United Kingdom, with pricing starting at £26,045 ($31,343) for the most affordable variant. In the United States, the previous-gen Rogue Sport is still listed on the brand’s official website, in the S, SV, and SL grades, with MSRPs of $24,960, $26,530, and $29,590 respectively, with front-wheel drive. The all-wheel drive models kick off at $26,460, $28,030, and $31,090 respectively. All of them pack a 141 hp (143 ps / 105 kW) and 147 lb-ft (199 Nm) of torque 2.0-liter gasoline engine, mated to a CVT.
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About the author: Cristian Gnaticov
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After a series of unfortunate events put an end to Cristian's dream of entering a custom built & tuned old-school Dacia into a rally competition, he moved on to drive press cars and write for a living. He's worked for several automotive online journals and now he's back at autoevolution after his first tour in the mid-2000s.
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