Nissan has made ten million cars in Britain

Sure, you’ve probably seen a thousand Nissan Qashqais merely today. But this one’s special. It’s the ten millionth car to roll off Nissan’s Sunderland production line, a feat reached in 33 years, quicker than any other UK plant.

Qashqais make up the biggest proportion of that, too, with over a third of that ten mil being examples of Nissan’s pioneering hatch. Following that are the Micra (2.3m), Primera (1.5m) and Juke (1.1m).

Most surprising? A whole 76,166 Infiniti Q30s have been pumped out of Wearside in the last four years. You’ll be lucky if you’ve seen one on the roads, leading us to wonder quite where they’ve all ended up.

We jest, of course, as this is a good news story, a welcome moment of fanfare during a shaky time for the British car industry. Honda and Ford are both cloisng factories and Jaguar Land Rover have laid off staff, while Sunderland will be lucky to dodge the drama of Britain’s ongoing political turmoil.

It’s been a huge success story thus far, however, with one car built every two minutes since its 1986 opening, staff numbers climbing from an initial 470 to almost 7,000.

“Building ten million vehicles is a tremendous achievement for everyone associated with the plant,” says Steve Marsh, the factory’s vice president.

“Reaching this huge figure has called on all the ingenuity, commitment and spirit of our highly skilled workforce, many of who hail from the North East of England.”