The relationship between Kaizer Chiefs and one of their sponsors of the past six years car manufacturer Nissan has recently taken a twist and has gotten personal, since the turn of the century to be precise the year 2000.

Nissan have supplied the club with a number of vehicles, which are used by various members of the clubs staff, the company has also supplied an additional vehicle annually to the clubs player of the year. David Obua the winner of the award at the end of the 2005-2006 season currently drives around town in a bran new Nissan X-Trials.

Nissan through the course of the week will deliver a new set of vehicles for the Amakhosi staff, which cover a range of products out of their wide bouquet, ranging from the stylish Nissan Murano 4x4 through to the economical and nippy Nissan Micra. There is something different about the new vehicles and that is for the first time since the sponsorship began in 2000, each vehicle has its own personalized licence plate.

Alternating with the words Chiefs or Khosi added with a unique number, Chiefs have once again begun a new trend which brand manager Dara Carroll explains is a fun way of introducing the new vehicles on to the streets.

“We looked at the way we were going to brand the vehicles and one of the things we thought of was creating an identity for each vehicle, with the personalized number plate each car can now be attributed to its owner, by doing this the drivers will not be walking to the wrong vehicle in the parking lot any more”.

It was with this in mind that Chiefs and Nissan pressed to have the cars labelled with a unique plate the Chiefs brand manager explains further “players on the field of play are identified by their jersey number. So we thought it would be nice to give our staff members their own unique identity on the road hence we opted to ensure that we personalized our license plates”.

The overall branding on the new vehicles differs substantially from previous vehicles branded by Nissan for Chiefs, in the previous two rotations, the cars were emblazoned with the words ‘Kaizer Chiefs we score with Nissan’. That too has now changed with a bigger Chiefs logo on the rear of the Vehicle flanked by a Nissan logo on the other end of the vehicle with the words ‘Proudly sponsored by Nissan’ in between.