Setting the latest fashion trend is not just what some Hollywood celebrities, today, even getting pulled over by authorities and being charged with DUI seemed to be the in thing. Some famous faces who were recent patrons of such cases were Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie and Lindsay Lohan.

But Nissan now has a solution to help those drink and drive motorists. Reports show that Nissan now offers the space-age Carwings navigation system on all its cars. Due to a recent upgrade it now comes with a nagging voice that is primarily intended to help deal with Japan’s notoriously high DUI problem.

Drivers starting their cars after 5:30pm will be warned by the navigation system: “Do not drive after drinking!” for all of five seconds. The message changes after 5am to “Let’s continue safe driving today”.

Other technologies used so far in Japan that take a more active approach include, the NTT DoCoMo’s Videophone Alcohol Check System. This uses mobile phones to check the sobriety of commercial drivers. The system also uses a central computer that needs to be fed regular readings from a 3G phone fitted with a breathalyser. Drivers need to be seen via videophone testing themselves before the data sent by the phone to HQ clears them to drive or not.

The innovations Nissan are integrating in their vehicles will really help motorists, but reports say that passive warnings are well known for being ineffective. The Carwings upgrade is part of a safety drive known as the ‘Hello Safety’ campaign. Nissan’s efforts to solve this problem is really commendable, but the long term solution would have to come from the drivers themselves.

Carlos Ghosn of Nissan, firmly believed and even backed the brand’s decision to manufacture cars in Sunderland despite the UK not joining the Euro.

Last month it was reported that Takeo Fukui, president of rival brand Honda, said the establishment of its factory in Swindon had been a mistake because of the UK’s failure to join the single currency.

But Ghosn insisted he would continue to fight to keep Nissan’s Sunderland plant open, regardless of the costs arising because of Britain not joining the Euro. He also mentioned that building a plant on foreign exchange rates didn’t make any sense.

Ghosn joined Nissan as its chief operating officer in June 1999. He then became the president by June of 2000 and was named chief executive officer in the following year. His turnaround of Nissan has gained him celebrity status in Japan, where he has published books and even has a manga character based on him. At the time he joined the company, it had debt of $20 billion and only three of its 48 models were generating a profit. Ghosn claimed that Nissan would have no net debt by 2005. Just one year after he joined, Nissan’s net profit climbed to $2.7 billion from a loss of $6.1 billion in the previous year. Nissan’s operating profit  margin has increased from 1.38% in FY 2000 to 9.25% in FY 2006.

Nissan Motor Company Ltd. yesterday released information on the multi-faceted four-year contract signed with Fox Sports Latin America to sponsor the South American Soccer Tournament: Copa Nissan Sudamericana.

This is not the first time that Nissan will be sponsoring the said tournament. In fact, Nissan has sponsored Copa Nissan Sudamericana since 2003. Nissan is investing in this long-term partnership to ensure an integral and solid marketing platform for its business in Latin America. This agreement also creates a great opportunity to consolidate Nissan’s brand presence in the region.

“Nissan is constantly searching for opportunities to build extensive marketing partnerships that allow us to engage consumers by building brand awareness on many platforms,” says Gilles Normand, Corporate Vice President, Nissan Motor Co. Ltd. “This ongoing Pan-American partnership with Fox Sports also gives us the opportunity to market our products into the whole highly diverse Latin American market and demonstrate Nissan’s commitment to the development of soccer in the region.”

“Fox Sports is proud to join forces with a great global company like Nissan and build on our long-term relationship to extend the sponsorship contract until 2010″, declares Hector Costa, Sales Sr. Vice President, Fox Sports Latin America. “Copa Nissan Sudamericana has impressively increased its ratings and I’m sure it will grow even more with Nissan’s participation.”

Copa Nissan Sudamericana is a soccer tournament which is held from August to December. For the 2007 tournament, 34 teams will play from a total of 12 countries, 10 of which will come from South America, Mexico and for the first time, the United States.

Copa Nissan Sudamericana is the largest Nissan sponsorship in Latin America and will be used as central hub of a multi-pronged marketing campaign for the launch of new vehicles and the introduction of brand image campaigns.

The Nissan Titan PRO 4×4 did not get a simple debut at the Lucas Oil World Series of Off-Road Racing (WSORR) Forest County Potawatomi Brush Run Races at Crandon Raceway this past weekend. For the new Nissan Motorsports which used the new race truck took an incredible win at the “14th Annual Potawatomi Chairman’s Cup Race.” But it did not just stop there, proving its capabilities by getting two third-place finishes in Saturday’s Rounds 3 and Sunday’s Round 4 WSORR competition. The powerful vehicle was driven by none other than championship-winning driver Carl Renezeder. Additionally in the PRO Light Pickup division is Chad Hord, who drove his Nissan Frontier-bodied race truck, took a second place in Round 3 and won the Round 4 race.

“We knew that the new Nissan Motorsports 4-wheel drive Titan-bodied race truck was going to be competitive, but to take a win in the first weekend of competition is more than we could have expected,” said Nissan Motorsports Marketing and Operations Senior Manager Ron Stukenberg. “Capped off with four podium finishes and a win for Chad Hord and his Frontier-bodied race truck is a true testament to the dominance of Nissan Motorsports power and the championship-winning drivers, Carl Renezeder and Chad Hord, as well as their top-flight teams.”

The 2007 season witnessed a number of debuts for Nissan Motorsports not just in the WSORR racing series, but also for Renezeder’s 715- horsepower 4-wheel drive Titan race truck this past weekend. Also, who would forget the all-new 310-horsepower Nissan Frontier race truck in the PRO Light Pickup division, which was first seen at the inaugural WSORR event on May 19 and 20.

In a detailed report of the Saturday race, Chad Hord ran a solid race by starting second and finishing in the same spot of the Round 3 PRO Light Pickup competition. During the Round 3 PRO 4×4, the situation became challenging as Carl Renezeder had to start towards the back of the pack because the new Nissan Titan race truck did not have any championship points from the first two rounds. Add to that the Titan had only 14 laps of practice prior to the start of the race. This, however, did not phase Renezeder, as he sliced through the field to finish in the third position.

The Titan and Frontier became victorious during the Sunday race as Chad Hord, in his Nissan Frontier-bodied race truck, won in Round 4 of the PRO Light Pickup competition. After a great starting position, Hord remained in second place, right behind the leader. Just in the right time, Hord took the lead and drove away from the pack of approaching trucks, cruising to victory and adding another win to Nissan Motorsports’ impressive victory. In Pro 4×4 division, Renezeder battled through traffic to take another third place finish in his Titan-bodied racer, ending a solid weekend of official WSORR competition for the new truck.

Renezeder also took home another win for Nissan Motorsports by taking the lead in the 14th Annual Potawatomi Chairman’s Cup Race, with a mere two laps to go. He started out in the back of both packs in his PRO 4×4 Nissan Titan race truck, and worked his way through the varied field of 17 racers.

The 14th Annual Potawatomi Chairman’s Cup Race is a unique ten lap money-only race with a $20,000 prize going to the winner. WSORR is the newest short course off-road racing in the United States. Based in the Midwest, WSORR features a high-speed, high-impact off-road racing experience which takes place at key tracks in Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri and Wisconsin.

Nissan improves vehicle quality as they open a new Field Quality Center or FQC. The said facility will focus on vehicle quality enhancement processes and will also conduct Field Quality Investigation Analysis or FQIA, to identify the root cause and solutions to vehicle problems. The center would be based at the Nissan Technical Center in Atsugi-shi, Kanagawa.

FQC will be a central collection base for incident parts received directly from the dealerships, where the parts are then subjected to detailed analysis. Equipped with the with state of the art testing equipment and measuring instruments, the center will be able to find out the cause of a problematic car part. This will then pave way to solutions of the particular product.

The FQC works jointly with the product development and manufacturing engineer teams in order to facilitate a continuous “quality improvement” process. The FQC findings are fed back to the Nissan Technical Center (NTC), where upcoming vehicles are being developed.

Nissan Senior Vice President, Total Customer Satisfaction, Kazumasa Katoh said, “The FQC will boost Nissan’s ability to deliver higher customer satisfaction. At the FQC, we will work to improve the quality of Nissan’s vehicles from every aspect in accordance with the Nissan Product Quality Policy (NPQP).” By applying the philosophy of “san-gen shugi” or “the principle of three-origins”, Nissan will endeavor to find solutions to quality issues by seeking out the root of the problem from three perspectives – the real part (genbutsu), on-site vehicle operating conditions (genba) and fact-based data (genjitsu).”

Nissan invested 900 million yen or $7.29 million into the facility, which occupies a 4,400m2 area, within the Nissan Technical Center campus. Construction of the center was completed in June 2007, giving an approximately 210 jobs. The FQC was designed to facilitate collaborative efforts with working areas dedicated to manufacturing engineer teams and supplier-partners. It is presently working on 10 quality projects in collaboration with different auto-parts suppliers.

The new facility will give Nissan the ability to process four times the quantity of parts-investigation compared to its previous capacity. Prior to the opening of FQC, Nissan’s field quality improvement team was located at the Shinkoyasu Operations Center in Yokohama.

Globally, Nissan has three other FQC facilities in operation since 2006, two are located in the U.S at Smyrna and Farmington Hills and another in Cranfield, U.K. for Europe. The FQC in Atsugi will serve the Japan domestic market as well as more than 140 countries in the General Overseas Market (GOM). All four global FQC facilities collaborate closely through constant communication in order to enhance Nissan’s global standard of quality.

Nissan will not be left behind with any technical advancement that may help improve their vehicles’ quality. In fact, the FQC is just one of the company’s facilities that help in product development. Other major investments the company had were Nissan Global Training Center (GTC) to train global experts in the Nissan Production Way (NPW), Nissan Global Production Engineering Center (GPEC) to standardize production engineering and global manufacturing processes, and Nissan Advanced Technology Center (NATC) to focus on breakthrough technologies for the future.