THE North-East's most important new car for years goes on sale this month - and thousands of jobs depend on its success.

The new Micra is built at Nissan's award-winning plant in Sunderland.

In production since the end of November, the supermini goes on sale in the UK on January 15.

Prices for the Micra start at £7,495 for the 1.0E three-door model, with the top-of-the range 1.4 SVE five-door automatic costing £11,695.

All the new Micras have twin airbags, electric power steering, electric windows and remote control central locking.

Factory bosses are pinning their hopes on the car's success.

They believe a sell-out Micra will bolster Sunderland's case for the next Nissan model to be built in Europe - despite the continued strength of sterling which makes UK sourced cars more expensive to build than their continental counterparts.

* Bargains could be few and far between for car buyers in 2003, experts warned last night.

Price cuts this year are unlikely to match those of 2002, said monitoring company CarPriceCheck.

After four consecutive months of major cuts, the average cost of a new car rose 0.08 per cent in December compared with November, the company said.

Last month did see some discounts of up to 21 per cent off some Ford, Rover, Volkswagen and Citroens.

But CarPriceCheck chief executive Steve Evans said: ''Established franchised dealers have been falling by the wayside for the past few months, and more will certainly follow. It's a really tough market at the moment.

''With tighter margins and falling manufacturer bonuses for dealers, prices are unlikely to fall dramatically in 2003."