Nissan is out here tooting its horn about the production of the three millionth Nissan Qashqai in the U.K. Everyone outside of the U.K. is asking, what the heck is a Qashqai and who is in charge of naming things at Nissan? Well, the Qashqai is a compact crossover SUV. Over there they call it the Qashqai, in Japan and Australia they used to call it the Dualis, and in the U.S. it’s the Rogue Sport. The name is Iranian and it translates loosely in English to “A horse with a white forehead.” Which brings me back to my original question, who is in charge of naming things at Nissan?

It only took a little over a decade for Nissan to pump out three million of these Qashqais from Nissan’s Sunderland Plant. This year alone the plant produced a record 346,856 units of the crossover, with 265,520 of those sold in Europe. The sales helped Nissan post its best ever full-year of European sales, with 762,574 vehicles sold across Datsun and Nissan models.

The Qashqai is a big part of the European success story. It is the single most successful model in Europe in the history of Nissan. The latest refresh in 2014 has helped it win more than 80 awards from various outlets including 19 “Car of the Year” titles. I don’t know about you, but I’d pay twenty bucks to hear somebody try to pronounce Qashqai in a Cockney accent.

Cheering the record production number Paul Wilcox, chairman of Nissan Europe said, “2017 was another record-breaking year for Nissan Europe, and 2018 has started the same way. The Qashqai’s achievement of reaching 3,000,000 vehicles produced in 10 years is a significant milestone, while the October launch of the new and eagerly awaited Nissan LEAF has seen record-breaking pre-orders of one every 10 minutes.”

Cheers to Nissan managing to sell three million units of a car no one can pronounce. Seriously, who?