Nissan Qazana To Mark New Design Direction For Nissan Brand

Nissan Juke teased, remains true to Qazana concept ... 2011 Nissan Juke Teaser: Press Release: JUKE: NISSAN”S NEW SMALL

Nissan Qazana: how the production car will look

issan Juke; Nissan; aka Nissan Qazana Production 2011 - present Class Compact Crossover Body Style 5-door, 5-seat CUV Length length - type here: Width

Nissan Qazana 2011 spotted road testing

Nissan Qazana SUV that started road tests. The debut of this model will be held next March at the Geneva Auto Show, but its sales start in the summer.

Nissan Qazana May Land As Electric Vehicle

following its appearance as the Nissan Qazana concept car at the ... The Nissan Juke sponsored the 2011 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue as part of its ad campaign

Nissan Qazana is so bizarre it almost looks French

REPORTS OUT OF JAPAN this week suggest that the Nissan Qazana concept may enter production as an electric vehicle.

Nissan Qazana 2011

Nissan's sub-Qashqai Crossover - the Nissan Qazana - has been caught out testing ahead of ... May 11, 2011 (10:48) New Aston Martin Zagato to debut at Villa d'Este Why would

Nissan Qazana Spied On Swedish Frozen Lake

REVEALED IN CONCEPT FORM this year at the Geneva Motor Show, the unusually styled Nissan Qazana is expected to signal a new design direction for the Japanese carmaker

Nissan Leaf Plans in Europe call for about 1 million EV

We've already seen the panic here in the U.S. as activists and analysts question our nuclear infrastructure, and Congress considers a re-examination of our existing facilities. These new fears about nuclear power have everything to do with the events unfolding at Japan's Fukushima power plant, and Automotive News wonders if that trepidation could dampen the prospects of electric vehicles as well.

Plans in Europe call for about 1 million EVs on the road by 2020, and a lot that push centers around increasing the number of nuclear power plants to feed these vehicles. Let's face it, an EV that's charged via electricity generated at an oil or coal-burning plant doesn't do much to decrease our reliance on fossil fuels, so nuclear makes a lot of sense. And as costly and time-consuming as it is to erect a nuclear facility, it's likely easier and less expensive than relying on solar, wind or hydro-electric energy sources.

Is this the world's youngest Enzo owner

Heard of Cody Leibel? Didn't think so, but this 23-year-old is possibly the world's youngest Ferrari Enzo owner.

Because if he's not the world's youngest Ferrari Enzo owner then he's surely the youngest person to own TWO of the 217mph supercars.

Now what the hell is going on? He also owns a Ferrari 550 Barchetta and, according to reports, has a Maserati MC12 on order.

This is a total of more than £2.1 million.

The owner of American record company C-Note was recently featured in a US magazine feature and we're absolutely dumfounded.

It's also been reported by super-posh website Luxist that Leibel's swish Beverly Hills pad is on the market for a cool $16.5 million (£10 million). The five bedroom house is in grounds of five acres and has an Infinity pool and room for 20 cars.
Could you save money on car insurance?

Now we can't help feeling jealous of Cody who has the cars, the house and probably a watch with a face the size of a birthday cake, but is he really happy? We suspect so.

Let's just hope he treats his Enzos carefully.

Just 399 of the Italian hypercars have ever been built and a number of them have come to an unhappy end with one spontaneously combusting a couple of weeks ago and another crashing at the recent Rally de Paris at Magny Cours.

Cody Leibel's Ferrari collection follows news of pop star Chris Brown, 20, being snapped with a Bugatti Veyron.

With the likes of Rooney and Ronaldo aged 23 and 24 respectively - having owned more flash cars than you can shake a stick we've got a lesson for you: try harder in PE and Music lessons.

Mazda celebrates the Miata's 20th birthday

Hard to believe, but the Mazda Miata is 20 years old. And Mazda didn't let the birthday pass without a party.

On July 17, parked in the inner courtyard of Mazda R&D in Irvine, Calif., were examples of every significant Miata and MX-5 Miata ever made. There were pristine first-, second- and third-generation cars as well as a number of racing Miatas and a couple of concept cars. The beautiful red Monoposto sat next to the gold, fixed-roof M Coupe, and that one was next to a 1995 M Speedster (the latter reminding us that there have been so many special- edition Miatas that the regular production cars should be worth more than the special editions when these things enter the collector-car market, though that may be unlikely given that most owners don't want to quit driving them).

Miata clubs from all over Southern California came, too, parking their Mazda roadsters in the lot outside R&D and setting up camp for a day of Mazda history. Mazda brought together the original Miata team for the occasion: product planner Bob Hall, designers Mark Jordan and Tom Matano, and engineer Norman Garrett, to name just a few. They all took the stage to relate how the iconic roadster came to be.

“We were sitting here, hired in the early '80s by Mazda to come up with ideas specifically for the U.S. market,” said Garrett. “It was easy to come up with four-door sedans and two-door cars. What we all missed [in those days] were sports cars.”

“The whole thing was predicated on a car that was fun to drive, enjoyable and no matter who you were, what you were doing, unless you'd been embalmed you'd get this grin,” said Hall. “And that was the whole idea. But with the reliability of a Japanese car.”

“All of us had grown up with the British cars,” said Garrett. “All of us had been racing them, running them around, and those companies died: MG died, British Leyland died, Alfa, Fiat disappeared, so we said, ‘There's a place to make a car like this.

“Rather than make a vacuous Stepford kind of car, it was important for us to make a car everyone would want to drive,” said Garrett.

Said Matano, “So, what if we come up with a car that we can drive every day, we can afford to buy and enjoy ourselves? It's kind of self indulgence.”

So a whole team thought it up, Jordan and Matano designed it and Japanese executives supported it.

“The guy you have to give credit to is Toshihiko Hirai, program manager for the car,” said Hall. “I had an idea, the designers had some styling, but if you didn't have Hirai to take that and make it into a car, you wouldn't have a car.”

Hirai's enthusiasm for the project was pivotal.

“At the end of the day, it would have been like a million other projects which we had and which never made it into production,” Hall said. “Every car company has them. Mazda has tons, Ford has tons, GM has tons, take your choice. They're all like that, projects that never see the light of day. Sometimes they're the best things to read and write about, but for whatever reason they didn't click. In this case, if it weren't for Hirai, there wouldn't be a car, nothing would have happened.”

“We had a lot of great players who all understood the concept,” said Jordan. “The concept was it was a perfectly balanced lightweight open roadster that was sexy, fun-to-drive and affordable. I think Bob Hall successfully communicated that concept to Japan.”

But it wasn't going to be a charity case.

“The idea came about, ‘Let's see if Mazda can make money doing it,' ” said Garrett.

That job fell to Hall, the Great Communicator.

“Just imagine this,” said Hall. “You've got the business case, you've got all the research you've done, and you go to management and you say, ‘We want to build this car, it's a lightweight sports car.' And they say, ‘What is the current market?' And you go, ‘Um, zero. There's no car like it.' Now you've got guys that are, ‘What's the current volume in the segment? How can we grow it? What's the percentage we can take?' Well, I said, there is zero, but we can expect to get 100 percent of the segment.”

“So [at that point] there was this entry-level sports-car possibility,” said Garrett. “In Mazda's case, because they didn't have a dedicated factory like GM did with its [Pontiac] Fiero, that one Fiero factory had to support 100,000 units a year or it got closed. At Mazda, they did flexible manufacturing. They'd have the truck, 626, 323 going down the line and they could stick in the MX-5 Miata and still make money. So Bob sent the fax over and said, ‘Can you make money on 40,000 units a year?' And they sent back, ‘Sure.' ”

The logic was that in 1980, MG and Triumph sold 40,000 units a year of a “horrible MGB and a basket case Spitfire,” Garrett recalled. So when those cars went out of production or were unavailable in the United States, those customers were left with nothing to buy.

“So it came down to, ‘Let's fill their needs,' ” said Garrett. “The beauty of it was there was no competitive product, so we didn't have to benchmark it against anything.”

All they had to do was build a couple of them to see whether it could all be put together.

“The original proof-of-concept car was built off of a GLC wagon and an RX-7,” said Hall.

That was the front half of a GLC and the rear of an RX-7. They took one of those first mules to Hope Ranch in Santa Barbara for a driving evaluation because they figured it wouldn't create much excitement in staid, conservative Hope Ranch.

“Immediately people began chasing us and yelling, ‘What kind of car is that?” Garrett remembered. “We had some Japanese executives with us and they heard that. It helped our cause.”

Work on the Miata proceeded. To make the production car affordable, the plan called for a GLC rear and an RX-7 front on the finished Miata. Yes, that would have meant a solid beam rear axle on the car.

“Then [a Japanese executive] came to us and said, ‘We have found some money; we can do a multilink,” Hall recalled. So that's what they did.

“The Ferrari Daytona was the bellwether [for suspension],” Garrett recalled. “It had double wishbones all around.”

The car eventually came together, came to market and the crowd went wild. So far, the total stands at 860,000 sold in a little more than 20 years, with a fourth generation in the works. The car is raced more than any other nameplate in America, with 2,500 spec Miatas on tracks across the States, including spec Miata, showroom stock-C Miata, showrooom stock-B Miata, improved touring, E production, F production and performance touring E, according to Robert Davis, Mazda senior vice president of product development and research.

The car's enduring appeal is simple, said Hall.

“You don't have to have somebody explain it to you. When you have that, a car will last a long time.”

BMW Vision EfficienctDynamics Concept

BMW Vision EfficienctDynamics Concept

Strong corporations always look to the future, and BMW is no different. Under the presumption that the company's entry into electric vehicles will be successful, BMW designers are already brainstorming ideas for new EVs.

BMW is planning a 2013 market release for the BMW Megacity EV, and company executive Ian Robertson says this is just the beginning. A full line of EV cars could be grouped together under one umbrella, including a sports car inspired by the Vision ED concept seen last year in Frankfurt.

"We’re in the final stages of picking a name, but we want it to become a strong sub-brand like we have with M," he told Autocar.

Still, first thing's first: get the Megacity finished and out the door. To keep the vehicle's weight down, it will feature a significant amount of carbon fiber. This should increase the vehicle's range, while improving certain performance figures.

The latter could be most important to BMW fans, and the company does not want to sabotage this important aspect of their brand. "[The Megacity] would still be a BMW to drive."

AC Schnitzer Tries to Sport Up the New BMW 5-Series

The new BMW 5-Series GT a.k.a. the Gran Turismo hasn't received the most flattering reviews for its looks from the press and bimmer fans alike, but famed German tuner AC Schnizter is attempting to change all that with the release of a new sport package that contains both cosmetic and mechanical goodies for the Bavarian automaker's luxury crossover.

The styling kit bundles a new front apron, bonnet air vents, side skirts, tail light trim, a rear apron with an integrated diffuser, chrome tail pipes and a wraparound boot lid spoiler plus a variety of alloy wheels in sizes from 19- to 22-inches.

Inside, AC Schnitzer offerings are limited to a unique aluminum cover for the i-Drive controller, special floor mats and an aluminum foot res and pedal set.

For the time being, the only available performance kit is for the 530d and its 3.0-liter straight-six turbo diesel unit that gets bumped from 245HP to 286 horsepower. The tuner's package for the diesel model is complemented by a new engine cover and a sports spring kit.

Nissan Qazana is so bizarre it almost looks French

We're just back from checking out the Nissan Qazana, and we're happy to report that it's every bit as zany as it looks in the stock images we saw seen earlier. In fact, it almost looks Gallic, like something from Citroen or Peugeot, or perhaps something reverse-engineered from a Paris-Dakar rally special. We're not entirely sure if (and/or how) the big-fendered, narrow-greenhouse look will translate to Nissan's planned production compact crossover, and we're quite sure that the rear-hinged suicide doors won't see showrooms when the Qashqai receives a kid brother. For now, we're enjoying its novel lighting (including the pair of crazy large front driving lamps and the fender-ridge daytime-running lamps, along with well-integrated boomerang taillamps) and red-velvet cake interior.

NISSAN REVEALS STUNNING DESIGN CONCEPT FOR NEXT SUNDERLAND-BUILT MODEL

* World debut of Qazana concept car
o Hints at the design direction of Nissan's new small Crossover
o Manufacturing planned for 2010 at Nissan's Sunderland factory
* European debut of new 370Z
* European debut of new Cube

Nissan will have a host of new cars for Europe on display at the 79th Geneva International Motor Show.

Qazana Show Car
The star of the Nissan stand will be Qazana, a show car providing a good indication of the, as yet unnamed, compact car that will be produced at the Nissan Sunderland plant from 2010, safeguarding around 1,100 jobs.

Best described as a small Crossover, Qazana has been conceived to challenge conventional wisdom about what buyers of small five-door cars should expect.

The striking design is dominated by large, wide wheel arches and a lower shape which gives a feeling of strength, while the upper body is dynamic, assertive and sporty. Qazana is a five-door, with the rear doors opening forwards once the front doors have been opened, in the style of 'suicide doors'.

Qazana will reinforce Nissan's position as a pioneer of Crossovers, building on the success of Qashqai and the recently introduced Qashqai+2.

Trial builds of the production car will begin in early 2010 before its introduction on the Micra/Note line. There it will take up manufacturing capacity created when production of the current version of Micra ends later that same year.

The new model has been designed and developed in the UK and represents around £57m of investment. Its arrival takes the total investment by Nissan in the Sunderland plant to around £2.5b since 1984.

Trevor Mann, Nissan Senior Vice President for Manufacturing in Europe, commented: 'The difficulties currently facing the car industry have been widely documented, and Nissan has not been immune.As a result we have had to make some difficult decisions, but the reason we have done so is to secure a long and positive future for the plant. Qazana points the way to that future and gives an indication of the unique and exciting car we will be producing in Sunderland next year.'

Other models being on display at the show
370Z
Being shown for the first time in Europe, Nissan's all new Z-car picks up where the popular 350Z left off. Using an enlarged version of the VQ V6 engine, now producing 331PS, and driving the rear wheels through a six-speed manual gearbox, which is available with the world's first synchronised down/up shift rev control system, or an all-new paddle-operated seven-speed automatic.

Cube
Already an icon in its home market of Japan, the all new Cube will be introduced for the first time in Europe in November, where its unique, friendly design will appeal to European car-buyers who are looking for something genuinely new and different.

Its large, open and airy interior will win the hearts of city-dwellers who are not traditional car 'fans', but who will find Cube appealing as it is an extension of their personality – creative, fun and distinctive. In Europe, the Cube will come with both a 106PS DPF-equipped 1.5-litre diesel and a 1.6-litre petrol, producing 111PS.

The Nissan press conference will be hosted by Carlos Tavares, Executive Vice President, Nissan Motor Co. Ltd at 17:00 on Tuesday 3rd March.