Its wholly-owned subsidiary Nissan Motors India Pvt Ltd, which has set up a huge car manufacturing facility near Chennai with an investment of Rs 4,700 crore, began its locally-manufactured car journey with a compact car Micra, with diesel and petrol engines.
Some other Japanese companies, unlike Nissan, started and continued with larger cars and are still struggling to get meaningful numbers in the small car dominated Indian market.
Though Nissan exports almost 90 per cent of production of Micra in India, the car became a success in the local market right from the word go.
Nissan’s next car Sunny, launched three months ago, is a mid-size sedan, a segment which has seen good traction even in the bad market. The company also launched a diesel version of Sunny a few weeks ago, to tap the booming market for diesel cars.
Though Sunny as a car is not a new name, Nissan has been selling sedans with this name for more than 45 years, there have been nine generations of Sunny models with total sales of more than 16 million units to 140 countries. The one that has been brought to India is the new 10th generation car, the contemporary model the company is selling in other countries as well.
To checkout Nissan Sunny, I recently took the petrol version of the car for a day-long drive. Keeping in mind the company’s ‘value-for-money’ approach, Sunny has been priced competitively at Rs 5.86 lakh (ex-showroom, Bangalore) for XE and Rs 7.78 lakh for the XV variant. Interestingly, Nissan has kept the prices of variants constant.
The first impression of Sunny is that it is a complete sedan in the mid-size sedan segment with luxury and comfort close to that of premium sedans. The company claims that the car gives a 16.95 kmpl fuel economy under the ideal test conditions, as per the ATAI certification.
Sunny, manufactured on the Nissan’s consummate V-platform (V stands for versatile) is available at 45 Nissan dealerships across the country. Though the car was designed in Japan, the company took significant inputs from Indian market to make it more suitable for Indian roads, known for large bumps and potholes.
The company is positioning the car with young and stylish professionals in mind and expects that the Sunny’s sophisticated style would set it apart from its rivals. Of course, the car’s roomy interior and large trunk is ideally suited to families going on a vacation.
Likeable Looks
Sunny has a sophisticated, modern sedan look with a sleek design that lowers drag coefficient of just 0.318. At 4425 mm in length and 2600 mm wheelbase, the Sunny compares well with others in the segment in terms of rear knee room space giving rear seat passengers more comfort.
The roomy trunk has a capacity of 490 litres. In terms of driving pleasure also Sunny scores well. The petrol version is powered by a modern 4-cylinder 1.5-litre double overhead camshaft engine from Nissan’s HR engine family, which can churn out 99 PS of power @6000 rpm and a maximum torque of 134 Nm@4000 rpm. The gear shift is smooth with a five speed manual transmission.
Apart from good pick up and comfortable torque, I found that Sunny is quite comfortable even on bad roads. It is the independent front end by MacPherson struts with coil springs that make the ride comfortable.
Both suspension systems are mounted on sub frames to help isolate road noise, vibration and harshness and there is also an anti-roll bar at either end, company’s engineers explained.
The safety features in Sunny are anti-lock breaking System (ABS), electronic break-force distribution (EBD), engine immobiliser and airbags.
Diesel version
Not to miss out the craze for diesel cars, Nissan has recently launched the diesel Sunny available in two variants, the XL and the XV. The company claimed that the car offers one of the best-in-class fuel efficiency of 21.64 kmpl (ARAI certified) and is ideal for city as well as highway driving. It is priced at Rs 7.98 lakh (XL) and Rs 8.78 lakh (XV) (ex-showroom Delhi).
The Sunny diesel, is powered by K9K diesel engine that emerged from the Renault-Nissan alliance. Built at the Nissan plant in Chennai, the diesel variant is powered by a 1.5-litre, 4-cylinder engine that produces 86PS of power @ 3750 rpm and a maximum torque of 200 Nm @ 2000 rpm. It has a five-speed manual transmission.