THE first car ever built on the production line at Nissan Sunderland was a white Bluebird saloon.

Nissan was taking no chances. Quality control - the bugbear of the British motor industry for decades - had to be paramount.

That's why the car was more than a month in the making, creeping slowly round the plant, lovingly worked on by the first Nissan employees who were meticulously checked and double checked at every stage.

It was a slow but sure introduction to car manufacturing for the 470 workers, many of whom had never seen a car factory before.

The keys to the first car were handed over to Prince Charles and Princess Diana, who performed the official opening on May 12, 1985. What the Royal couple did with it isn't known, but the Princess of Wales wasn't about to abandon her Audi 80 cabriolet for a Bluebird no matter how well built.

Nissan vehicles arrived in Britain in 1968 when they were known as Datsuns. In its first full year, Datsun UK - an independent company set up to market and distribute the cars over here - sold 1,200 vehicles.

Despite the slow beginning Datsun cars soon established a reputation for being cheap to buy, well equipped and fearsomely reliable.

Sales took off. By 1974 they had reached 60,000, making Datsun the UK's biggest car importer, outstripping not only every other Japanese manufacturer but the more established European ones too.

In 1984 overall sales topped the one million mark, giving Nissan a six per cent share of the UK market. To put that into perspective, Rover cars, the UK's only truly British mass manufacturer, currently has a five per cent share.

Much of the credit should go to multi-millionaire Octav Botnar who backed the marque when it was little known outside Japan. Botnar's fall from grace would be spectacular and his revenge would directly affect the North-East plant.

Nissan's decision to choose Britain for its European manufacturing base was closely linked to its strong market share in the UK. Bosses also made much of their "long association with the British motor industry" - which went back to 1934 when Nissan Motor Company first started producing Austin 7 cars under licence - but the truth was more prosaic.

Nissan wanted to sell more cars in Europe. To duck import quotas, it needed a European base. The British government was desperate for the Japanese to come here.

While the French and Germans huffed and puffed about Britain becoming a "Japanese aircraft carrier anchored off Europe" Margaret Thatcher held out the prospect of Government aid for inward investment by Nissan.

Not everyone was as welcoming. Nigel Pritchard, operations director at Austin-Rover, said that for every job Nissan created in the North-East it would destroy two in the West Midlands. His assessment was supported by Ford.

He went on to say the £90m in Government inward investment aid for Sunderland "Would have been better spent on Austin-Rover." Presumably bosses at BMW, who lavished nearly £2bn on Rover before bailing out a couple of years ago, wouldn't agree.

Pritchard also dismissed the Sunderland site. In a bitter remark he said Rover "wasn't particularly impressed" by the low level of technology installed in the North-East plant.

Nissan preferred to do its talking where it mattered - on the factory floor. Sunderland soon overtook Rover's massive Longbridge plant for productivity and went on to become the most efficient factory in Europe.

The Japanese never claimed that phase one of Sunderland was state-of-the-art when it opened. Instead, as Garel Rhys, professor of motor industry economics, said: "They have taken production systems as an art to the highest form."

What did make the 920-acre plant special was its single union deal, the innovative approach to management-worker relations and the decision to settle in an area where car manufacturing was unknown. Nissan's holy trinity were: teamwork, quality and flexibility.

"The bits weren't revolutionary," said Prof Rhys. "Taken together the whole thing was."

Nissan seized the opportunity to drum home its new approach by taking full page ads in The Times. Next to a picture of Japan was written: "In the last 11 years Nissans have been exported by a small island with a highly skilled workforce."

Beside a picture of Britain the line ran: "In the next 11 years Nissans should be exported by a small island with a highly skilled workforce."

It went on: "In England, the people who will build Nissans have a variety of skills and they'll be encouraged to use them.

"There won't be the strict job demarcations that have done the British motor industry so much harm. There won't be a wide gap between managers and workers: the general manager will wear the same clothes as the men on the line.

"People will be more involved, more satisfied, more employable, less bored and better paid. As a result, the cars these people will make will be better."

And so it was. Total production rose quickly from 5,139 in the first year to 124,664 by 1991. So did local content. The first Bluebirds had 20 per cent EU-sourced components - mainly glass, tyres, plastics and carpets. Today's Primeras, Micras and Almeras have more than 80 per cent.

The first hiccup came in 1990 and wasn't of the plant's doing. Having eyed Botnar's Nissan distribution set-up enviously, the Japanese parent decided it would sell the cars itself. It terminated Botnar's contract, leaving his AFG chain in the cold. The resultant row tarnished the launch of Primera - the much improved Bluebird replacement - and left the car so damaged that it never truly recovered.

Unwilling to spend money for Nissan's benefit, Botnar's distribution company scaled back its marketing spend as the car launched.

By November, things were so bad that production of UK cars was halted.

Botnar's company ordered 6,700 Primeras for the year but sold just 2,000. Despite many a motoring journalist lauding the Primera as "Britain's best kept secret" the row drove an unknown number of buyers into Ford and Vauxhall dealerships.

Undeterred, Nissan pressed ahead with a second model for Sunderland. The Micra proved an even bigger hit with the critics than Primera. In its first year (1992) it even won the European Car of the Year Award - the first Japanese car to achieve such an honour.

Even today Nissan Sunderland continues to confound its critics. The latest innovation being to produce three different models on two production lines - a complex task that some people suggested would not be possible.

Achieving the impossible seems to be all in a day's work at Sunderland. The plant has come a long way since it took a month to make a Bluebird