How many Nissan Qashqais have been sold?
Since 2007, Nissan has sold 7.3 million Qashqais around the world, including related models under different nameplates, including Dualis in Japan and Australia, Xiaoke in China and Rogue Sport in the United States.
That figure makes it one of the biggest ever success stories of the motor industry. Even as others have caught up in designing and producing similar crossover-style cars, the Qashqai remains a sales juggernaut, and it makes up 65 per cent of all of Nissan’s European sales to this day.
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Where does the Qashqai story start?
It starts at the Geneva motor show of 2004, when Nissan first showed off the original Qashqai concept (which, in fairness, it had been working on since 2002, making the Qashqai nearly 25 years old depending on how you look at it).
It was a big hit at the show, but few ever believed that it would lead to such a massive global success story. It probably didn’t hurt that there was a little Irish genius in the mix.
Cork-born engineer David Twohig had a major role in developing the first Qashqai, and would later go on to work on the likes of the Renault Zoe and the Alpine A110. His book on working in the motor industry, Inside The Machine, is well worth a read.
So the Qashqai’s actually Irish?
Sort of. Let’s go with the football rules, and say it has an Irish grandfather, so it could definitely qualify to play for us in the Euros.
Anyway, since Twohig and the team created the first one, the Qashqai has taken off like a sales rocket and, as well as being part-Irish, it’s also a bit European to mix in with its Japanese heritage. Most of the Qashqais built, 4.5 million of them, have been made at Nissan’s plant in Sunderland, in the UK.
What’s Nissan doing to celebrate the Qashqai’s birthday?
To mark 20 years on sale, Nissan has worked with Filipino digital artist Heymoonly to create a special one-off Qashqai, the exterior of which is covered in a ‘sticker bomb’ colour scheme.
It gets a Y2K-inspired interior with velour seat trim, too, and even an original iPod playing mid-2000s tunes. There’s also a new online archive, the Nissan Qashqai 20th Anniversary Heritage Collection (which you can find here), which has some fascinating behind-the-scenes archive photos, videos and written material. Definitely worth a look.
When is the new Nissan Qashqai coming?
It looks as if Nissan is working towards a replacement for the current Qashqai in 2028, and it will be very much an evolution of the current model, focusing on ever-more-efficient hybrid power rather than going fully electric.
That new Qashqai will have some serious heritage to live up to, but we figure that in the past 20 years, Nissan has worked out what it’s doing.
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