Micra makeover: Nissan’s sharp supermini reviewed Receive US

Nissan Micra
Score: 4 out of 5 stars
Good: smooth styling, trendy cabin, intelligent security equipment
Dangerous: intrusive display pillars, harsh experience
Worth: from £11,995 – £20,020 as examined

Wedge-shaped automotive designs have been falling out of trend for some time, however no person appears to have informed Nissan. It has provide you with a placing, angular design for the newest Micra supermini that appears arresting from nearly each angle.

The automotive’s sharp traces are countered by curvaceous flanks, that includes a swooping crease that flows down onto the perimeters from the bonnet. The attention-catching crease helps to offer the automotive a extra balanced profile. With out it, the Micra would appear to be a hungry anteater, snuffling on the floor in entrance of it.

Disguised rear door handles give the Micra a false three-door look, which is odd on condition that it’s solely accessible as a 5 door hatchback. I’m not a fan of hidden door handles (you find yourself having to level out to passengers that there are doorways on the again) nevertheless it’s a design quirk that appears to be more and more well-liked.

Whether or not you just like the styling or not, it could be laborious to argue that the brand new design is just not an immense enchancment on the earlier Micra. Launched to a perplexed world in 2010, the old Micra was thoroughly facelifted in 2013 but was still too small, ugly and uncomfortable to compare with strong-selling rivals like the Renault Clio.

The new car fixes almost all of the shortcomings of the previous Micra. The one major gripe that carries over is an uncomfortable ride, though the 17-inch alloys bolted to the top-spec Tekna-grade Micra I tried might be partly to blame. Trundle over a pebble and you’ll know about it.

However the upside is a sporty feel on country roads, and steering that reacts keenly to your efforts at the wheel. Contributions to the handling are also made by a couple of clever electronic systems – Intelligent Ride Control, which judiciously dabs the brakes to curtail bouncing over bumps, and Intelligent Trace Control, which corrects the car’s line through bends by braking diagonally opposite wheels, adding or subtracting from the car’s tendency to swing in a particular direction if the car starts to drift.

The interior is much roomier than before and several streets ahead of the old Micra in terms of design and material quality. The top-spec Tekna trim level I tried includes an appealing stitched leatherette dashboard panel, soft to the touch, as well as matching kneepads either side of the centre console, giving off some reasonably convincing upmarket signals.

Indeed Nissan has shared significant parts with some of its larger models to try to lift quality – the central seven-inch touchscreen fitted to all models above the base Visia grade is virtually identical to the one you’d find in a Qashqai. Only the plastic surround and the various option buttons are different (and, surprisingly, a little bit nicer in the Micra if you ask me).

The steering wheel also looks very similar to the one fitted to the Qashqai following its recent facelift, with the same array of handy on-wheel buttons. You will need to choose at least the mid-range N-Connecta trim for the wheel to be wrapped in leather, however.

All but the Visia-grade cars include a handy five-inch colour information screen between the instrument dials. The display can be configured using the wheel buttons and helpfully displays the current speed limit, gleaned by a camera in the windscreen as you drive along.

Smartphone app-integration comes included with the central touchscreen, while GPS navigation is added from the N-Connecta grade up, with junction diagrams handily repeated in the instrument panel.

Nissan has also stuffed the new Micra with safety kit. In the UK, all models include an automated emergency braking system with pedestrian recognition and a lane-departure warning system that vibrates the wheel and applies differential braking to help guide the car back into its lane. These two features in particular raised the Micra from a four-star to a five-star rating beneath the Euro NCAP scheme.

Much less helpfully, the rakish exterior interprets to a steeply slanted windscreen, resulting in display pillars that encroach just a little greater than I’d like into the view at junctions. That’s presumably one motive why some key rivals, reminiscent of the newest Kia Rio, have moved to a extra upright display with their latest redesigns.

Maybe on account of these pillars, I discovered it fairly troublesome to evaluate the place the extremities of the Micra would possibly lie. I discovered myself worrying whether or not the little Nissan would match by means of gaps that it most likely would have sailed by means of.

Little question I’d develop extra accustomed to the scale of the automotive if I owned it. Failing that, there’s the £550 optionally available Imaginative and prescient+ pack, which incorporates parking sensors, a blind spot alert, transferring object detection and Nissan’s Round View Monitor, which makes use of cameras to supply a 360° view of the automotive’s environment on the centre display. Helpfully, warnings from the parking sensors are drawn in yellow, amber or purple on the overhead view.

At a millimetre beneath 4 metres from nostril to tail the brand new Micra is lots greater than the outdated model, making it a way more aggressive proposition in opposition to rival superminis. It’s nearly precisely the identical size as the newest Ford Fiesta, for instance.

An extended wheelbase additionally helps the brand new Micra to supply an excellent steadiness between rear legroom and baggage area within the boot. There’s room for a spare wheel beneath the boot ground, even when the automotive I attempted did with out one.

My take a look at automotive got here outfitted with an IG-T 90 petrol engine, which is fitted with a dependable stop-start system and is rated at 104g/km in CO2 phrases.

The engine is a 0.9-litre, three-cylinder turbocharged unit producing 90 horsepower and 140Nm of torque. That’s sufficient to propel the automotive’s 1.1-tonne mass to 62mph in 12.1 seconds. The automotive can really feel just a little sluggish off the mark in first gear, however proves energetic sufficient as soon as on top of things. With a five-speed guide, it’ll overtake easily on motorways in prime gear.

It can additionally reply nicely in the event you attempt to drive economically. I achieved 52mpg throughout my week of assessments – regardless of the automotive’s eco suggestions display giving my driving a rating of solely 60 out of 100.

The pricelist for the brand new Micra begins at £11,995 for essentially the most fundamental mannequin, rising to £18,765 for a diesel-powered version within the prime Tekna trim, earlier than choices reminiscent of paint. The most effective purchase might be the N-Connecta model with the IG-T 90 petrol engine, which begins at £16,115.