How the Nissan Qashqai became king of the crossovers

Nissan’s Focus-chasing sales goals were receding like the unreachable refuge of a chase nightmare. But despite that, the company was masochistically lining itself up for a third pop at an Almera bullseye.

During 2002, its designers and engineers were hard at it, as product planning chief Pierre Loing recounted a couple of years later. But Ghosn, by now steering a robustly recovering Nissan, cancelled the programme in December.

“Merry Christmas!” was Loing’s understandably bittersweet reaction to this news. Despite binning a heap of work, Loing knew that Ghosn was right.

The next problem was how to conceive a car decisively more appealing than a shopping hookkitted Almera. The Ghosn way is not to stare at a blue sky waiting for a vision but to get down and understand what customers might want, using plenty of research and analysis.

What that turned up was that the C-segment in which the Focus, Golf and Almera were competing was already fragmenting towards MPVs and four-wheeldrives.

Further delving uncovered signs that punters didn’t necessarily need the absolute versatility of an MPV, and that while they liked the chunkily adventurous, high-riding demeanour of a four-wheel-drive, they didn’t want the bulk and complication of the breed.

So perhaps there was something in between. From today’s perspective, it seems a fairly modest leap to deduce this, but in the early 2000s, it was only a research-backed hunch.

“The Qashqai has a distinctive flavour born out of the theoretical buyer’s emotional and functional needs,” explained product planner Etienne Henry in 2005. And at that point, two years before project P32L was ready to go on sale, the Nissan Qashqai buyer really was only theoretical.

“Back in 2007, the introduction of the Qashqai was a risk,” says Nissan’s vice president for Europe, Paul Willcox.

“It was defining a new segment that didn’t exist and therefore we were uncertain as to what the reception would be. But it’s been unbelievable, from launch right the way through to today. We have won many press awards, the industry has followed our lead and every competitor has brought a crossover into the segment.

“It’s clear that consumers love the Qashqai. You can tell that from the number we’ve sold. We’re selling 250,000 cars a year, every year, and there’s no sign of a decline in demand, which is remarkable.”

It may be a Nissan chief telling it, but the numbers say he is not wrong. Since the model’s launch in February 2007, Nissan has sold more than 3.3 million Qashqais of both generations in 137 countries.

Of those, 2.3m were bought in Europe, its primary market, and 261,429 in the last year alone. For many, the Qashqai makes a stage in people’s motoring life more palatable than it would have been in the days when frumpy MPVs and rattling estates were the only choices.

Some of this writer’s neighbours are a case in point: before kids, a BMW 320d Coupé occupied the drive; after kids, it’s a Qashqai.

“When the Qashqai launched in 2007, it was unique in the market,” says Willcox. “It has remained as the number one crossover because it has stayed true to its original ideals and because we have consistently added technology through the car’s life.”

Nissan’s Sunderland plant has played a huge role in the Qashqai’s success, this factory being the primary supplier. By the end of 2016, it had produced 2,655,551 of the 3.3m global total.