21.05.2014 - 10:24
On Tuesday the Japanese car manufacturer presented the new Nissan Pulsar, which is a new 5-door version of the existing compact car, at Madrid’s Automobile Fair. The new vehicle will be assembled in Barcelona’s Zona Franca plant, located next to the city’s harbor. In order to build the new Pulsar, Nissan will invest €110 million in the Catalan plant and will hire up to 1,000 workers by 2015. Nissan’s Barcelona plant was already in the news a few days ago as it began to produce the new e-NV200 electric van for the global market. The new Pulsar will start production in July, in order to be on the market starting in October. Nissan is planning to produce 80,000 units of this model per year. According to the Director General of Nissan Iberia, Marco Toro, the assignment to build the new Pulsar confirms the competitiveness and future of the Barcelona plant. Nissan decided to allocate further cars to the Catalan plant after the company and the unions reached an agreement by which salaries were reduced in order to increase competitiveness and ensure the arrival of new projects.
Nissan’s Barcelona plant, located in the industrial and logistics Zona Franca district, will produce the new version of the Pulsar model, a car that has been built since 1978. With the new Pulsar, which is still in an evaluation phase, the Japanese brand comes back to the compact models. The new Pulsar will be offered with two different engines: a 1.2 litre 115 horse-power petrol model or a 1.5 litre diesel with 110 horse-power. By early 2015, a new 1.6 litres petrol engine, with 190 horse-power, will be also produced.
Starting in July, Nissan will add the new Pulsar to the list of models built in the Spanish State. This list currently includes its Pathfinder and Navara car models, as well as its Primstar, NV200 and e-NV200 vans. The Pulsar will only be built in Barcelona, where Nissan has its sales offices for the whole of Spain and Portugal.
Global car sales in Spanish State increased by 10% in March
The launch of this new car model coincides with an increase in car sales in the Spanish State. In March 2014, 80,000 new cars were sold, a 10% growth on the same month of 2013. The car industry in Spain expects to end 2014 with sales of 800,000 cars.
