Datsun Go boldly goes downmarket

The new Datsun Go has been revealed as a basic Micra destined for sale in emerging markets as a budget offering. Goes on sale in 2014.

[nggallery id=1576 template=customlinks]

We’ve know since March that Nissan was adding an extra brand name to its portfolio – to add to Nissan and Infiniti – by reaching back in its history to bring the Datsun brand back to life, and we got the first image of what we now know is the Datsun Go at the start of July.

Having spent a fortune eradicating Datsun from the minds of buyers and replacing it with Nissan, Nissan are now working to make car buyers in emerging markets fall for the new Datsun Go in the way the UK  did for the first Datsun Sunny in the 1970s.

So we get the Datsun Go which is, to all intents and purposes, a Nissan Micra with all the fripperies removed and pitched – initially at least – at the budget end of the car market in India where it will go up against cars like the Hyundai i10 and cost under £5,000 which, entirely coincidentally, is the starting price for the i10.

For your ‘under Rs 4.0′ you’ll get a fairly basic compact car with a 1.2 litre engine and five-speed gearbox and not a lot else, although in a nod to technology you can have a docking station for a smartphone.

The Datusn Go for India kicks things off for the new Datusn brand, but Nissan will be rolling out in other ’emerging’ markets – like Russia and South Africa – with a Go that’s ‘individually developed for those markets’, although that’s likely to be cosmetic rather than mechanical differences.

Will the new Datsun Go make it to the UK and Europe? It seems highly unlikely, but with the state of the economy in Europe, who knows?