Early Christmas present
Lucky Dualis buyers have taken delivery of their new crossover SUV in time for Christmas...and Santa has also left something in the stocking for Nissan Australia35,000 unique browsers ventured to Nissan's Dualis mini website between the car's first public showing in October and its on-sale date in December.
The car was first shown in Sydney at the Australian International Motor Show back in October and was wholesaled to dealers during December.
In other words, there was a lot of interest in this new model, which has the typical packaging of a small car, but built on a soft-road platform.
The expressions of interest in the new car, in among the website stats, gave Nissan the heart to roll out the first shipment to dealers in December.
Ross Booth, Nissan Australia's General Manager Marketing, spoke to us about the Dualis and Nissan's tactics and strategies for marketing the car.
Booth says Nissan was "hamstrung for time", with the X-Trail launch late in November (more here) and the new Micra meeting the press in the first week of December (more here). That left precious little time for the Australian motoring media contingent to experience the local spec Dualis at first hand, ahead of the on-sale date.
Despite the timing, Nissan Australia was sufficiently encouraged by the impressive international sales response to the Dualis, to "get them out into the dealerships" in Booth's words. And domestically, "the interest was out there".
With word starting to spread through the mainstream media from this month (and a television commercial for the Dualis due to hit the screens around the end of January), Nissan expects sales to build strong market share in coming months.
Dualis, badged as the Qashgai, went on sale in Europe just nine months ago. In most markets, there's at least a three month order bank and in Russia, they're waiting up to twelve months to take delivery.
Australian consumers have been lucky to see Dualis reach the local market as soon as it has. With the strong response to it overseas -- and the Russians getting the same 2.0-litre petrol models that the Aussie market does -- Nissan Australia had to commit to whatever supply the importer could procure for the land Down Under.
According to Booth, that's 350 units per calendar month.
As for Australia seeing a diesel variant of the Dualis any time soon (such a vehicle does exist, by the way), forget about it.
» Get the best price on a new Nissan Dualis
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