More affordable Nissan Navara double cab confirmed for South Africa

Nissan will introduce a new entry-level Navara double cab to the South African market before the end of 2024, as well as a mid-grade automatic variant to the sub-Saharan African region, confirmed Stefan Haasbroek, Nissan Africa Product Marketing Director, Reuters reports.

The manufacturer is saying goodbye to the NP200 this week, its best-selling product by a country mile, and is betting on the new Navara variants to retain at least a portion of the market share that it will lose once the NP200 completely disappears from the shelves.

The discontinuation of the NP200 furthermore forced the Nissan factory to let go around a quarter of its workforce, however, in an attempt to minimise layoffs, it has expanded its export markets to also include African nations such as Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Sudan, and Tunisia.

With more countries to cover, Nissan will ramp up production of the Navara towards the second half of 2024 which the automaker expects will enable it to retain slightly more employees than it expected to.

“It is compensating for a big part of that [NP200 production], but not fully,” said Nissan South Africa MD Maciej Klenkiewicz, according to Moneyweb.

The Japanese brand’s Gauteng plant has a capacity to produce around 50,000 units per annum, though it declined to divulge how many vehicles are currently rolling out of the factory.

Nissan Navara Single Cab XE

What to expect

The current entry-level Navara double cab (DC) is sold in SE trim level, however, the single-cab (SC) version has an even lower-specced XE grade which we expect will be applied to the new base DC.

With this in mind, the more affordable DC will likely come with 16-inch steel wheels, black bumpers, PVC seat upholstery, manual airconditioning, manual door locks, two airbags, and ABS with brake assist – forgoing luxuries such as a radio, remote central locking, fabric seats, electric windows, and a number of assistance systems that are all found in the SE derivatives.

The two-door XE is also the only model in the 15-strong Navara family to be available with a 2.5-litre petrol as well as a turbo-diesel mill.

The petrol generates 118kW and 233Nm while the diesel does 120kW and 403Nm, and both powerplants are married to a six-speed manual gearbox that channels drive to the rear axle.

It remains to be seen whether Nissan will bring the petrol powerplant to the new entry-level DC or if it will stay exclusively diesel-driven like the rest of the four-door Navaras.

At present, the Navara DC retails from a starting price of R524,500 meaning the new base version will probably be priced at or below R500,000.