Successor to Nissan Sunny arrives in Singapore

By Tony Ng

The successor to the Sunny and Latio has been unveiled in Singapore.

Branded as the Almera in Southeast Asian markets, the Thai-made car has a relatively wide shoulder width with a new chrome-accented front grille (see photos below). In China, it retains the Sunny brand.

Underpinning the car is a new global 'V' platform that is touted to be around 68kg lighter than the previous platform.

Driving the Almera will be an all-aluminium, fuel-efficient 1.5-litre engine mated to a four-speed automatic transmission.

Rated fuel consumption stands at 6.9-litres/100km while power and torque comes in at 99bhp at 6,00rpm and 134Nm at 4,000rpm respectively.

The family car is touted to have class-leading cabin space. Rear legroom is expansive at 636mm and effective cabin room stands at 1,828mm.

Safety features include an anti-locking braking system, brake force distribution and brake assist, with two front airbags.

Variants

Three variants will be offered. The entry-level Comfort variant will come with factory-fitted 15-inch wheels.

The Premium variant has several enhancements, including 16-inch locally fitted wheels, keyless entry and push-start, leather-covered steering wheel, audio controls on steering, and a remote key release boot. Both entry-level and premium will have leather upholstery.

Nissan distributor Tan Chong is also bringing in a five-speed manual transmission variant with the same specifications as the Comfort model.

Mr Ron Lim, general manager for Nissan distributor Tan Chong Motor, expressed hope that the incoming Almera will lift sales volume.

Another five to six models, including a hatchback for the compact segment will be coming next year, Mr Lim revealed.

The Almera arrives after a long absence of new Nissan bread-and-butter models. The last one in recent memory was the Nissan Sylphy in 2006, positioned as a premium saloon.

The distributor is making the car available for preview at its Ubi showroom at 19 Ubi Road 4 before production begins in December.

It will be priced, with COE, from $91,300 onwards for the manual, $95,300 for the Comfort, and $98,300 for the Premium.

A $1,000 pre-launch discount is offered to those who book now. Nissan owners get another $1,000 off.

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Finally Nissan introduces a new bread&butter model after the Sunny's "dominance" for about a decade and seriously needing a change. Sad to say though, it's no longer made in Japan. At 99bhp, it seems that power has taken the backseat with emission rate and fuel efficiency taking the priority.

Interior wise, Nissan designers have taken a bold step in making the dashboard look cute, and cheap, to be honest. S$95k for a car that would have sold for only S$55k back in the days of year 2005-2009. It is not hard to imagine how well this will sell.

COE Crunch

COE prices for cars soared to new highs this year in the latest bidding exercise, with the premium for big cars reaching nearly S$76,000.

The jump in the Certificate of Entitlement (COE) prices comes just days after the Transport Ministry said it would cut the annual vehicle population growth rate to one per cent next year from the current 1.5 per cent.

On Wednesday, the COE price for big cars registered the steepest jump, of S$12,289 to S$75,889. This was followed by the Open Category COE which rose S$8,542 to S$73,600.

The COE premium for small cars rose S$5,823 to S$56,112.

The premiums for big and small cars are the highest so far this year. For the Open Category, the highest COE price so far this year was S$75,789, seen in January.

Car analysts said the latest results are not surprising as the recent announcement had caused some panic among potential buyers.

39-year-old Sharif Maricar, a real estate agent, said: "Before the government made the announcement, I was actually thinking of waiting for another one or two years because I expected the COE to go down. And after the announcement, it is more of a knee-jerk, so the panic part came about."

Mr Maricar isn't the only one to panic.

Distributor Kia Motors said sales doubled over the weekend following the announcement.

"A lot of people thought that there would be an increase in prices in the short term. So a lot of people rush in to buy. So a lot of the distributors also rush to secure the COEs, and therefore being a demand and supply game, you drive up the prices," said Chin Kee Min, senior manager of distributor Kia Motors.

However, Mr Chin added that the Transport Ministry's decision to cut vehicle growth will not necessarily cause COE premiums to increase eventually.

He said: "The COE quota is determined by both growth and deregistration, so there are two factors. Growth might be cut but there may be a chance that deregistration is actually going to increase, because more cars are going to be deregistered.

"10 years ago, the government started to release more cars, so both factors may end up mitigating each other and you won't see a huge fluctuation in the COE quota."

The COE prices for goods vehicles and buses increased S$4,210 to S$37,011 while the COE premium for motorcycles went up by S$13 to S$2,091.

The Land Transport Authority (LTA) received 2,864 bids for the second bidding exercise in October for COEs.

- CNA/cc/ls


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The COE crunch is set to get worse in coming years. In the future, other than Germany, Singapore might be the only country where BMW n Merc dominate the roads.

BMW Switch

Very good advertisement by BMW.
The woman is hot though