17 May 06
It's been a busy first month for our C+C.
Its first task was to drive back to the place of its birth - the Nissan factory in Sunderland.
After driving nearly six hours to get to Sunderland, I was treated to a tour around the factory. Granted, for some people, watching endless cars moving slowly along a platform, gradually being built up from sheet metal to a full car, could be mildy boring. I loved it.
I was captivated by the noise, the smell, the sparks, the robots, the never-ending movement of the line, the workers and the forklift trucks, which no matter how hard I tried, I always seemed to be in the way of.
Some say the British motor industry is dead but, with Sunderland producing some 315,000 cars a year - nearly 20% of the UK's total car production - it's a long way from that. Sunderland employs 4,400 people, building five models: the Micra, Micra C+C, Almera, Primera and the Note. By the end of the year, there'll also be the production version of the Qashqai mini-SUV concept coming out of the gates.
