Nissan Magnite name trademarked; could be the new compact SUV

- Magnite likely to be the name of the upcoming Nissan compact SUV

- Trademark was earlier registered under the Datsun brand

Nissan India has registered the Magnite trademark for its upcoming car, with the Controller General of Patents Design and Trademarks under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. The patent was filed last month and the vehicle in concern is likely to be the upcoming compact SUV, as Nissan has no other launch plans in the foreseeable future.

It should be noted that Nissan earlier owned the rights to the 'Datsun Magnite' brand name. However, with the company's plan to dissolve the Datsun brand in India, it has registered the Magnite name under the Nissan brand.

The Nissan compact SUV will share its underpinnings with the Renault Triber, which uses the CMF-A+ platform. The same architecture will also spawn a compact SUV for Renault (codenamed HBC). So, we can expect the compact SUV to share a lot of components with the Triber. Nissan has already released a couple of teaser images of the compact SUV, and going by first impressions, it seem to be a smaller sibling of the Nissan Kicks.

Under the hood, the Nissan compact SUV will be powered by the 1.0-litre TCe turbo-petrol motor that will be offered with a manual transmission as well as a CVT. Globally, this motor makes 99bhp/160Nm in the Renault Clio. While a timeline isn't available, Nissan is expected to launch the compact SUV in India in the second half of 2020.