The homegrown Nissan Navara Warrior off-road ute is poised to go from strength to strength with plans to ramp up production after recently passing a major production milestone.

Nissan Australia has forecast a doubling of sales for its locally-developed Warrior models – the Navara ute and Patrol four-wheel-drive – which have been engineered by Premcar, the outfit previously responsible for Ford Performance Vehicles and supercharged Ford Falcons.

“We just celebrated 10,000 (vehicles) and we’re expecting that to grow year-on-year,” said Andrew Humberstone, the boss of Nissan Australia and managing director of the Nissan Oceania region.

“With the Nissan Patrol Warrior now added to the line-up, we expect to double sales of our Warrior models this calendar year.”

Having pivoted from Australian-made V8 sedans to the booming ute market, Premcar has used its engineering and manufacturing expertise to work its magic on the Nissan Navara and Nissan Patrol – by making them better off-road and on-road.

Nissan celebrated final assembly of the 10,000th Warrior vehicle last month and is gearing up to add the finishing touches to even more examples of the Nissan Navara and Nissan Patrol as both vehicles approach the end of their respective model cycles.

A new Nissan Navara and the next generation Nissan Patrol are estimated to be about two years away.

To help keep the Nissan Navara and Nissan Patrol fresh, Premcar has given both vehicles a major capability boost.

And, unique in the segment, last year Nissan added a bare bones version of the Nissan Navara Warrior with cloth seats and vinyl flooring.

The Nissan Navara Warrior SL (pictured above and below) still gets all of the heavy-duty hardware from the Pro4X model – but misses out on leather seats, carpet flooring, bi-LED headlights, and a few other mod-cons.

But the Nissan Navara Warrior SL at $67,200 drive-away (versus $74,600 drive-away for the Nissan Navara Pro4X Warrior) has a $7400 cheaper price tag.

The no-nonsense pack arguably makes the Nissan Navara Warrior SL the most suitable ute on sale in Australia today for hardcore off-road work.

In a similar way to Holden Special Vehicles and Ford Performance Vehicles – offsite engineering firms which did the final assembly of enhanced vehicles – Premcar has a separate production line on the northern outskirts of Melbourne.

The donor vehicles arrive from their overseas factories in standard form before Premcar overhauls each vehicle with significant upgrades to suspension, wheels, tyres, external bodywork, underbody protection, and custom-made tow bars that improve clearance angles and yet can still fit a full-size spare.