Nissan's new sedan Sunny to hit Indian roads

Nissan Motor Co on Monday unveiled the All-new Global Sedan model 'Sunny' at the 8th China (Guangzhou) International Automobile Exhibition. The model will be launched in China in January 2011 followed by India in the second-half of the next year and progressively across 170 countries. The new car will be built at Nissan's Chennai facility in India, the company said in a statement.

Following the success of our first locally made car -the Nissan Micra, we are happy to reveal the first visuals of the second car to be produced in India. We are confident that the New Global Sedan, which is also based on the versatile 'V' platform, will delight the discerning Indian customers. The model will be launched in India in the second half of 2011, Nissan Motors India Managing Director and CEO Kiminobu Tokuyama said in a statement.

The Nissan Sunny is 1.5 lire HR15DE engine with dual injectors and a new-generation Xtronic CVT with an auxiliary transmission.

The company, which inaugurated its manufacturing facility at Oragadam near Chennai along with its joint venture partner Renault at an investment of 45 billion rupees over a seven-year period, has a capacity of 200,000 units.

In July this year, the company had rolled-out the Micra hatchback in petrol version and sold over 6,000 units of petrol version of Micra in the Indian market.

The company plans to export the petrol Micra to as many as 100 foreign markets by Oct 2011. The export to these countries will commence after meeting the demand for this car in the Indian market by ramping-up the annual production of Micra to 2,00,000 units. Importantly, there are no export plans for the Diesel Micra, it added.

Nissan formed the 50:50 joint venture with French automaker Renault to set up a manufacturing plant at Oragadam near Chennai with an upfront investment of 23,000 million rupees (about $500 million).