United Kingdom’s vote to leave the European Union is jeopardizing local car production, and one of the models that could suffer is the Nissan Juke.
Produced at the company’s factory in Sunderland, and with roughly 80 percent of the output exported, mostly to EU markets, the brand’s subcompact SUV is under threat, as the company’s officials refused to give assurance that output will continue at the facility located in northeast England.
“We make all our decisions on merit and added value to shareholders. We make them based on what we know, and right now we don’t know“, as Trevor Mann, Nissan Chief Performance Officer, told AutoNews during the 2016 Paris Auto Show, last week.
Even if negotiations between the UK and EU are said to take two to three years, a possible plan sees Nissan asking the local government for compensation as a condition for investing in the country, if the company has to pay taxes to export its cars to the European Union, according to chief Carlos Ghosn.
Nissan CEO’s announcement comes right after the manufacturer said that it will invest in the Sunderland facility to build the second-generation Nissan Juke, without providing an exact date: “This announcement gives security to our Sunderland plant beyond 2020“, Ghosn previously said.
With an annual capacity of just over 500,000 units, the Sunderland factory is also where the Note is being put together too, but due to poor sales, the compact car will be dropped next spring in order to make room for the brand’s most popular model, the Qashqai.
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