Mr Rushforth will join Nissan at its Yokohama headquarters and report to Philippe Klein, Nissan chief planning officer.

He was most recently chief operating officer and a senior vice president of Hyundai's European operations, based in Frankfurt, Germany.

‘Allan's past professional experience includes running sales operations in international markets and working across cultural boundaries,’ said Mr Klein. ‘Nissan is a company that values cultural diversity and Allan shares this and has demonstrated the ability to lead multicultural teams successfully. I believe that he is uniquely prepared to lead Nissan's global sales.’

Mr Rushforth, a British national, started his automotive career in the UK in 1983, working in fleet sales with the Rover Group plc and rose through the organisation.

Following the carmaker’s acquisition in 1996 by BMW, Mr Rushforth was assigned to South Korea as executive director with responsibility for the launch of the Land Rover brand, trading as a division of the newly established BMW subsidiary in the market.

He returned to the UK in 1998 as the sales director for Land Rover until he was recruited by Volkswagen Group AG to lead Audi Retail Operations from their Milton Keynes, U.K. headquarters. He remained with VW through 2007 and left the Group as director of Group Services.

He joined Hyundai in 2007 and has held his current position since then.