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Special delivery: Nissan Qashqai from Sunderland to Scotland

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Special delivery: Nissan Qashqai from Sunderland to Scotland | Top Gear

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Special delivery: Nissan Qashqai from Sunderland to Scotland

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Special delivery: Nissan Qashqai from Sunderland to Scotland

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As the UK awakes from a COVID-induced slumber, ‘Sunderland to south of Inverness’ is hardly the dream roadtrip you’ve been craving for irresistible travel inspiration. But as the UK car industry also awakes from a COVID-induced slumber, it’s a crucial one. Beaten and bruised by Brexit and a pandemic, it’s been craving good news. And right on cue, Nissan has served it up.

A billion-pound investment is bringing a battery gigafactory to the company’s Wearside plant, creating over 6,000 new jobs and turning Sunderland into a self-proclaimed “world-first EV manufacturing ecosystem”. The car you’re looking at here won’t yet be part of that, but it’s a vital stepping stone – gen three of the crossover OG, the Nissan Qashqai. A car designed, developed and then built in Britain, it was the first high riding hatchback to truly infiltrate the UK bestsellers list – despite wearing a name not everyone’s confident saying out loud.

However, I’ve always made a point of talking friends out of buying one of these, instead recommending something sharper to drive (usually in vain, mind). That’s despite Mackem blood proudly pumping through my veins. If you’ve always wondered what Mackem means, by the way, it likely derives from the city’s shipbuilding days and a colloquialism of “we make them, they take them” – we mack ‘em, they tack ‘em. Nissan’s plant in Sunderland macks half a million cars in a typical year – the 3.8m Qashqais pumped out so far accounting for one in five cars manufactured on British shores since 2007 – while supporting 35,000 jobs. And the British public is only too happy to tack them; 20 per cent of those 3.8m have been sold on our isles.

Today we’re an intermediary between the two processes, acting as part of the Nissan supply chain to whisk a Qashqai from the end of the production line and give its new owner – Colin McAndrew, nestled in Inverlochy in the Scottish Highlands – a bit of special treatment. A six-hour, 300-mile trek lies ahead of us, the aim being to slalom Colin’s car through the more abundant than usual sightseeing crowds quicker than any chock-a-block transporter can.

Photography: Jonny Fleetwood

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After a final inspection at the end of the line, we whack on some numberplates and hit the road, but not without a brief lap of the city so intrinsic to this car’s production. Since the shipyards and coal mines shut, Sunderland has had two major organs pumping optimism around it – its football club and its car factory. The former has been stuck in a third-division groove for years. The Mackem folk could do with the latest Qashqai being Premier League.

The first signs as we navigate the city’s cultural hotspots (don’t snigger, it was shortlisted for UK City of Culture 2021) is that Nissan has refused to rock the boat. There’s been no rolling of ergonomic dice like within Volkswagen Towers – in the Qashqai, buttons are plentiful and big. While this top-spec Tekna+ brings a large touchscreen and digital dials, their font sizes remind me of when you see older folk using magnified smartphone screens. You get in and operate everything without a moment’s hesitation. Not sexy, but eminently useful in a big family holdall.

As we leave the city and join the slip road onto the northbound A1, it’s clear that of this engine’s perky 156bhp and less perky 9.5secs 0–62mph claims, it’s the latter that best represents real world performance. While there’s mild hybrid assistance for the 1.3-litre 4cyl up front (here driving the front wheels through a 6spd manual), it doesn’t do much to fill turbo lag. But while this engine isn’t hugely punchy, it is quiet. Almost ludicrously so. I recall the same unit buzzing away like a hedge strimmer in a Mercedes A-Class, yet here Nissan appears to have noise insulated the engine bay with the keenness of a teenager feverishly sticking eggboxes to the wall ahead of their band’s first jam, only with genuine success. If there’s a mainstream petrol car that’s more hushed than this, I’m yet to drive it.

Surprisingly few of our 300 miles are spent on motorways, and after briefly passing the higher-rises of the Glasgow skyline – another industrial city with a newly cultural slant – we’re onto the A82 for the rest of the journey. And into a constant snake of cars driving at quite unpredictable pace as tourists flock to Glen Coe’s Icelandic aesthetic in lieu of a poolside all-inclusive. The Qashqai’s ease of use had kept my heart rate low until now, but I’m suddenly struck by the urgency with which we deliver this car in a state of shiny, Final Line Inspection flawlessness. Some of the UK’s greatest driving roads will be taken at snail-like pace. And this time there will be no hastily grabbed Greggs eaten at the wheel to sustain my blood sugar levels.

We pull in at the first (perhaps only) empty beauty spot for a snack break, the Qashqai’s height advantage over the dullsville Almera it originally replaced giving us a wide choice of lay-bys to use. It’s doubtless not the key advantage that convinced Nissan to take such a bold punt on the crossover sector nearly 15 years ago, but it’s one us petrolheads can crowbar from a car that otherwise mildly offends our pernickety tastes. Photographer Jonny is doe-eyed with the light up here – it’s a gloriously summery day whose appeal is only diminished by an extortionate midge count – and begins extracting camera equipment from the boot. “It looks great, doesn’t it?” I assume he means the mountains, but it seems he’s referring to the Anglo-Japanese SUV.

What’s certain is that it looks a tad more exciting than it drives

Whether it looks as bold when there are a bazillion of them on British roads, I’m not so sure. What’s certain is that it looks a tad more exciting than it drives. There’s plenty of squidge in the suspension but a firm edge (especially on its new 20in alloys) should ensure it’s not nauseating for dinkier folk in the back. It grips well but inspires little enthusiasm to explore every last inch, while the manual gearshift is so featherweight that the engineers might well have used a 911 R as a ‘do the opposite of this’ benchmark.

But that’s the whole point. It’s all so quiet, light of touch, easy... and subsequently the ideal car to take on slightly nerve-shredding delivery driving duties in. Perhaps not what the engineers had in mind, but it’s making the Highland hoards a doddle to negotiate. As enthusiasts we celebrate cars that require effort – handling that needs taming, a wheel or pedals that demand muscle – brushing off anything deliberately easy-going as a cop-out. The sales charts typically redden our faces, however, and this latest Qashqai feels tailor-made for settling back and taking in the scenery on a journey just like this. Right down to the seat massage function, whose motors are probably the noisiest mechanical components Jonny and I experience all day. It feels wrong to indulge in their intense relaxation even before they’ve kneaded Colin’s stresses away, but surely he wants his delivery driver as zen as possible while transporting the new McAndrew motor car?

Mind, Colin himself is as zen as anyone I’ve met, and living somewhere so unutterably beautiful I can see why. After a final fill up and a feverish wash, rinse and polish in Fort William – for peak new car feeling, despite the fact it’s now half run in – we pull into a serene little street to be greeted by the Qashqai’s new keeper and his hench little minder, Hamish the French bulldog. One glances at the Ceramic Grey SUV with significantly more suspicion than the other, and reading the room, I switch across the blanket and bed from the outgoing X-Trail as quickly as possible so that he can reverse his bouncer-esque frame into place and see what’s what. Hamish, not Colin. But you already knew that.

If running a Morgan in the Top Gear Garage has taught me anything, it’s that how or where a car is constructed can be just as emotive a selling point as how many g it’ll corner at. The crossover market is one bereft of utterly dazzling star quality, almost all of its contenders offering a slightly different flavour of ‘decent’. So the argument for sticking with the original – the one designed, developed and built in Britain and thus made for our tastes while possessing a smaller carbon footprint – is undeniably strong.

A car so deliberately mainstream and people-pleasing will always find a place among the UK’s bestsellers. Frenchie-pleasing too. Hamish is now fully relaxed and Colin’s so pleased with the roominess of the double floored boot, he raises the possibility of getting a second dog to put in there. Hamish’s ears instantly prick up like antennae.

If it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for us. Next time a friend proffers a Qashqai as the car they want to lease, I doubt I’ll recommend them elsewhere. Now how do I get back home?

VERDICT: The crossover pioneer isn’t the best car to drive in its class, but it’s quite possibly the easiest to live with, which is surely what matters more. It’s made locally, too...

# data.attributes.body.processed
As the UK awakes from a COVID-induced slumber, ‘Sunderland to south of Inverness’ is hardly the dream roadtrip you’ve been craving for irresistible travel inspiration. But as the UK car industry also awakes from a COVID-induced slumber, it’s a crucial one. Beaten and bruised by Brexit and a pandemic, it’s been craving good news. And right on cue, Nissan has served it up.

A billion-pound investment is bringing a battery gigafactory to the company’s Wearside plant, creating over 6,000 new jobs and turning Sunderland into a self-proclaimed “world-first EV manufacturing ecosystem”. The car you’re looking at here won’t yet be part of that, but it’s a vital stepping stone – gen three of the crossover OG, the Nissan Qashqai. A car designed, developed and then built in Britain, it was the first high riding hatchback to truly infiltrate the UK bestsellers list – despite wearing a name not everyone’s confident saying out loud.

However, I’ve always made a point of talking friends out of buying one of these, instead recommending something sharper to drive (usually in vain, mind). That’s despite Mackem blood proudly pumping through my veins. If you’ve always wondered what Mackem means, by the way, it likely derives from the city’s shipbuilding days and a colloquialism of “we make them, they take them” – we mack ‘em, they tack ‘em. Nissan’s plant in Sunderland macks half a million cars in a typical year – the 3.8m Qashqais pumped out so far accounting for one in five cars manufactured on British shores since 2007 – while supporting 35,000 jobs. And the British public is only too happy to tack them; 20 per cent of those 3.8m have been sold on our isles.

Today we’re an intermediary between the two processes, acting as part of the Nissan supply chain to whisk a Qashqai from the end of the production line and give its new owner – Colin McAndrew, nestled in Inverlochy in the Scottish Highlands – a bit of special treatment. A six-hour, 300-mile trek lies ahead of us, the aim being to slalom Colin’s car through the more abundant than usual sightseeing crowds quicker than any chock-a-block transporter can.

Photography: Jonny Fleetwood

After a final inspection at the end of the line, we whack on some numberplates and hit the road, but not without a brief lap of the city so intrinsic to this car’s production. Since the shipyards and coal mines shut, Sunderland has had two major organs pumping optimism around it – its football club and its car factory. The former has been stuck in a third-division groove for years. The Mackem folk could do with the latest Qashqai being Premier League.

The first signs as we navigate the city’s cultural hotspots (don’t snigger, it was shortlisted for UK City of Culture 2021) is that Nissan has refused to rock the boat. There’s been no rolling of ergonomic dice like within Volkswagen Towers – in the Qashqai, buttons are plentiful and big. While this top-spec Tekna+ brings a large touchscreen and digital dials, their font sizes remind me of when you see older folk using magnified smartphone screens. You get in and operate everything without a moment’s hesitation. Not sexy, but eminently useful in a big family holdall.

As we leave the city and join the slip road onto the northbound A1, it’s clear that of this engine’s perky 156bhp and less perky 9.5secs 0–62mph claims, it’s the latter that best represents real world performance. While there’s mild hybrid assistance for the 1.3-litre 4cyl up front (here driving the front wheels through a 6spd manual), it doesn’t do much to fill turbo lag. But while this engine isn’t hugely punchy, it is quiet. Almost ludicrously so. I recall the same unit buzzing away like a hedge strimmer in a Mercedes A-Class, yet here Nissan appears to have noise insulated the engine bay with the keenness of a teenager feverishly sticking eggboxes to the wall ahead of their band’s first jam, only with genuine success. If there’s a mainstream petrol car that’s more hushed than this, I’m yet to drive it.

Surprisingly few of our 300 miles are spent on motorways, and after briefly passing the higher-rises of the Glasgow skyline – another industrial city with a newly cultural slant – we’re onto the A82 for the rest of the journey. And into a constant snake of cars driving at quite unpredictable pace as tourists flock to Glen Coe’s Icelandic aesthetic in lieu of a poolside all-inclusive. The Qashqai’s ease of use had kept my heart rate low until now, but I’m suddenly struck by the urgency with which we deliver this car in a state of shiny, Final Line Inspection flawlessness. Some of the UK’s greatest driving roads will be taken at snail-like pace. And this time there will be no hastily grabbed Greggs eaten at the wheel to sustain my blood sugar levels.

We pull in at the first (perhaps only) empty beauty spot for a snack break, the Qashqai’s height advantage over the dullsville Almera it originally replaced giving us a wide choice of lay-bys to use. It’s doubtless not the key advantage that convinced Nissan to take such a bold punt on the crossover sector nearly 15 years ago, but it’s one us petrolheads can crowbar from a car that otherwise mildly offends our pernickety tastes. Photographer Jonny is doe-eyed with the light up here – it’s a gloriously summery day whose appeal is only diminished by an extortionate midge count – and begins extracting camera equipment from the boot. “It looks great, doesn’t it?” I assume he means the mountains, but it seems he’s referring to the Anglo-Japanese SUV.

What’s certain is that it looks a tad more exciting than it drives

Whether it looks as bold when there are a bazillion of them on British roads, I’m not so sure. What’s certain is that it looks a tad more exciting than it drives. There’s plenty of squidge in the suspension but a firm edge (especially on its new 20in alloys) should ensure it’s not nauseating for dinkier folk in the back. It grips well but inspires little enthusiasm to explore every last inch, while the manual gearshift is so featherweight that the engineers might well have used a 911 R as a ‘do the opposite of this’ benchmark.

But that’s the whole point. It’s all so quiet, light of touch, easy... and subsequently the ideal car to take on slightly nerve-shredding delivery driving duties in. Perhaps not what the engineers had in mind, but it’s making the Highland hoards a doddle to negotiate. As enthusiasts we celebrate cars that require effort – handling that needs taming, a wheel or pedals that demand muscle – brushing off anything deliberately easy-going as a cop-out. The sales charts typically redden our faces, however, and this latest Qashqai feels tailor-made for settling back and taking in the scenery on a journey just like this. Right down to the seat massage function, whose motors are probably the noisiest mechanical components Jonny and I experience all day. It feels wrong to indulge in their intense relaxation even before they’ve kneaded Colin’s stresses away, but surely he wants his delivery driver as zen as possible while transporting the new McAndrew motor car?

Mind, Colin himself is as zen as anyone I’ve met, and living somewhere so unutterably beautiful I can see why. After a final fill up and a feverish wash, rinse and polish in Fort William – for peak new car feeling, despite the fact it’s now half run in – we pull into a serene little street to be greeted by the Qashqai’s new keeper and his hench little minder, Hamish the French bulldog. One glances at the Ceramic Grey SUV with significantly more suspicion than the other, and reading the room, I switch across the blanket and bed from the outgoing X-Trail as quickly as possible so that he can reverse his bouncer-esque frame into place and see what’s what. Hamish, not Colin. But you already knew that.

If running a Morgan in the Top Gear Garage has taught me anything, it’s that how or where a car is constructed can be just as emotive a selling point as how many g it’ll corner at. The crossover market is one bereft of utterly dazzling star quality, almost all of its contenders offering a slightly different flavour of ‘decent’. So the argument for sticking with the original – the one designed, developed and built in Britain and thus made for our tastes while possessing a smaller carbon footprint – is undeniably strong.

A car so deliberately mainstream and people-pleasing will always find a place among the UK’s bestsellers. Frenchie-pleasing too. Hamish is now fully relaxed and Colin’s so pleased with the roominess of the double floored boot, he raises the possibility of getting a second dog to put in there. Hamish’s ears instantly prick up like antennae.

If it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for us. Next time a friend proffers a Qashqai as the car they want to lease, I doubt I’ll recommend them elsewhere. Now how do I get back home?

VERDICT: The crossover pioneer isn’t the best car to drive in its class, but it’s quite possibly the easiest to live with, which is surely what matters more. It’s made locally, too...

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Time to find out why the Qashqai's a part of UK furniture, by visiting the factory and offering our services as a delivery driver