We’re in Yokohama for the 2015 Nissan 360 event for Asia and Oceania, and paid a visit to Nissan’s Global Headquarters in Japan’s second largest city. Located at the bayside central business district of Minato Mirai, the carmaker’s modern HQ houses the Nissan Global Headquarters Gallery on its first floor.
If you’ve been to the previous Nissan Gallery in Tokyo’s posh Ginza district, you’ll find this new one huge. It is, at 4,000 square meters, four times larger.
There are four themed-zones – Product Zone (latest models available in Japan), Global Products Zone (global product line up), Corporate Communications Zone (explains corporate activities) and the self-explanatory Heritage Corridor. No gallery is complete without a boutique, and there’s a Starbucks outlet too. Nissan says that an average of 2,500 people visit during weekdays and around 4,000 do so at weekends.
The boutique has plenty of tempting merchandise even for a neutral like myself, but since the prices aren’t exactly ringgit-friendly, I roamed the hall for freebies to share with you – postcards in the form of digital photography.
From classic race cars like the legendary Nissan R380 (with GR8 engine display), R383 (1970, 700 PS V12) and the R90CK Le Mans racer (1990, 800 PS V8) to famous JGTC racers (before it was called Super GT) like the “Xanavi Nismo” GT-R and the “Pennzoil R33” from 1998. In contrast, the Leaf Nismo RC is a preview of the future.
Current road cars are of course present. The halo R35 GT-R and Nismo versions of the Fairlady Z (370Z), Juke and Note sit alongside green models (Leaf, X-Trail Hybrid, e-NV200, Nissan’s rebadged Twizy), luxury saloons (Skyline 200 GTt a.k.a. Infiniti Q50, Fuga or Infiniti Q70) and Nissan’s penguin-like EPORO robots.
A group of the latter can move around without banging into another EPORO, a 2009 precursor to the autonomous cars the company is currently working on. A self-driving Leaf was also in the house.
