Small car lovers and cheap skates rejoice! Nissan is planning to make a new model, based on the much-loved Micra, and bring it to the good ol’ U. S. of A. The Micra is this car that’s like Nissan’s bread and butter everywhere BUT America. Nissan cranks them out the way McDonald’s makes burgers, and they seem to be very practical, yet Spartan rides. Cheap too.
Nissan made it official that the automaker is going to add a new, entry-level model to its US lineup as a competitor to the Toyota Yaris and Ford Fiesta. The as yet unnamed car will be based on the next generation Micra, also known as Nissan’s “V-platform”. It will be a hatchback (of course) but there’s also word of two additional models coming along, a four-door sedan and a multipurpose vehicle.
“Nissan’s engineers spent four years to find ways to reduce production costs and weight out of the small car,” said “V platform” manager Vincent Cobee.
Nissan also said that the new platform will see a 50 percent improvement in fuel economy over the current Micra, which sounds a bit optimistic to me. The Nissan engineers say they have reduced the total number of parts in the car by 18 percent. Nissan also says that the U.S. market will play a significant role in the firm’s plan to sell a million vehicles a year from all the derivatives of the newly created “V platform”.
What Nissan DIDN’T say was which of the three models would make it to the States, the also failed to mention when the car would go on sale or if the U.S.-market vehicle(s) would be manufactured here.
As far as the venerable Micra was concerned, Nissan said that will be made in five different plants around the world, including India, China, Thailand and two other unnamed locations.
Source: CarScoop
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