“I DON’T want to think where we would be without the success of Qashqai,” Nissan manufacturing boss Kevin Fitzpatrick told me on Monday, as the Sunderland carmaker smashed yet another record.

To expand on his point, I don’t want to think where the North-East would be without Nissan.

This week, the two millionth Qashqai vehicle rolled of the Sunderland production line.

The model's importance to the plant – and to North-East industry in general - should not be underestimated.

The Sunderland-built car reached the landmark two million figure in just eight years, beating some of the most famous British cars ever made.

It took 10 years for the original Mini and the new Mini to each clock up two million units, 11 years for the Ford Cortina, 14 years for Ford’s Escort and the Ford Fiesta passed the mark in 18 years.

Our dependence on Nissan for exports, inward investment and jobs makes it the single most important business in our region. God help us if it ever shut down.

A report published today reckons with the right products the factory could make 650,000 cars in 2015/16. To put that in context, in 2010 Sunderland became the first plant in UK car making history to make more than 400,000 cars in a year.

Professor Garel Rhys of Cardiff University will unveil his grandly named study, The Motor industry in the UK: A Cool Shower of Reality, at a reception in the House of Lords. He will warn the UK’s two big producers – Nissan and Jaguar LandRover - to learn from mistakes of the past that saw powerhouses such as Ford and British Leyland grind to a halt.

Encouragingly, prof Rhys reckons Nissan is firmly anchored to the UK by the size and scope of its operations. His logic is that it cannot simply be shifted elsewhere. The UK operation would be impossible to replace without major problems for the Japanese manufacturer.

Furthermore, it is expanding its North-East plant to start making the Infiniti Q30 model next year, and to begin exporting cars to the US.

Industry analysts have warned that Nissan's investment in a plant in Russia could have a negative impact on its North-East investment. Whenever a UK based car company contemplates expansion overseas there is an outcry that British factories and jobs are at stake -this is nonsense, says Prof Rhys. In the global motor industry an operation must be multinational if it is to obtain optimum scale. All car firms must export or die – none can rely on their domestic market for sales.

Nissan Sunderland exports about 85 per cent of its Qashqais. It is on track to become one of the world's largest car plant complexes.

This runaway success story looks set to continue.

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