NISSAN appears to be zooming along the road to recovery following the implementation of its now famous revival plan.

The transformation of the Japanese car giant since France's Renault took a 36.8 per cent stake in the business almost two years ago has been dramatic.

That was signalled yesterday by the car manufacturer's return to profit, after three years in the red.

Carlos Ghosn, president of Nissan, announced results after tax of £1.8bn, a massive improvement on the losses of recent years.

But he accepted that the turnaround wasn't complete, and vowed to increase sales of the company's cars by more than one million vehicles a year, and cut its debt mountain to zero within three.

Announcing the results, Mr Ghosn said: "Nissan is back. The Nissan revival plan has produced the best financial performance in the company's history.

"We have more than tripled operating profits and cut debt to its lowest level for 15 years.

He added: "We are now ready to cast off the mindset of an underdog.

"We have moved from the emergency room to the recovery room, but that recovery is not yet complete."

"We are passionate about our current achievements as we are about our future goals."

Nissan's continued revival will be boosted by one thing, the sale of good cars that drivers want to buy, and be seen in.

To that end, Nissan has 22 new models scheduled for release within the next three years, some of which the 5,000 staff at the car maker's plant in Sunderland will be hoping to have a hand in making.

That will also boost the 15,000 associated jobs in the UK car parts supply industry, including the likes of Calsonic at Shildon and TRW in Peterlee.

Already the staff at Sunderland have won the contract to develop the replacement for the Micra, currently built at the Wearside plant, against competition from the Flins plant of Renault, in France.

But with a replacement for the Almera due and other new models also in the pipeline, interesting times lie ahead for Nissan's Sunderland workforce.

Nissan will be hoping that the new cars it develops over the next few years will help to tempt back the car-buying public, particularly in its native Japan where it has lost share to its major rivals Honda and Toyota.

In fact, Nissan's share of the Japanese market has been halved from 35 per cent ten years ago, to just 17 per cent this year.

Better looking, sexy cars could be the way ahead for the continued revival of Nissan.

The company is already introducing new platforms, including the new Micra which shares the same platform with Renault's popular Clio.

That means that the French manufacturer's cars could be built by the workforce on Wearside in the near future.

In fact, that was the main problem when Nissan was deciding on where to place the replacement Micra model.

That eventually came down to a straight choice between Flins in France and Sunderland.

Nissan is set to reduce the number of platforms it uses over the next three years.

It had 24 two years ago, but plans to reduce that to 19 by 2003.

By 2005 it will have just nine platforms and that number will eventually fall to five.

Many of those will be shared with Renault, allowing cars of both makes to be made at each other's plants.

One thing is certain, there is still a lot of work to be done by Mr Ghosn and his team.

His aim is simple. He said: "The Nissan that will emerge from the revival plan will be very different from the one that I encountered when I first came to the company. The Nissan revival plan is fully engaged and the people at Nissan are stimulated and driven by the results they deliver."