Eight years after they stopped making the Almera, Nissan are about to challenge the VW Golf and the Ford Focus with their new compact hatchback that they have said will be called the Pulsar.

In a statement from the Japanese car giant, Nissan chiefs say that the new five-door hatchback has been designed to meet the specific demands of European car buyers.  Pulsar will go on sale in the autumn and will be built at Nissan's factory in Barcelona
Nissan has not sold a compact hatchback in Western Europe since it dropped the Almera in 2006.

Nissan Executive Vice President Andy Palmer recently said: "Nissan was in that segment for a long time but we didn’t stand for anything. What has changed is that is we invented the Qashqai and that has transformed the car landscape,”

Nissan first used the Pulsar name in 1978 and it was widely used for models in Asian and Australasian markets. The Pulsar badge also appeared in some European markets in the early 1990s on the N14 model.

The Pulsar will be underpinned by Renault-Nissan's new CMF (common module family) platform, which is also used on the new Qashqai and the X-Trail SUVs