MONTREAL, Quebec — Context – as every celebrity or politician who has ever been “misquoted” will tell you – is everything. Circumstances and comparison form the setting by which we judge statements, events, or, in the case of a road test in Driving, the performance of an automobile.
Thus, a 903-horsepower McLaren P1‘s performance may be inexplicable to the person driving a Toyota Camry, but, judged against Porsche‘s all-but-equally-as-powerful 918, its advantage in acceleration, cornering and braking may be more illusory than fact. Ditto for Mercedes‘ S-Class: A luxury beyond the lowly Ford Fiesta owner’s wildest dreams, Audi’s A8, BMW’s 7 Series and Jaguar’s XJ can all at least claim to offer the very same hedonistic accoutrements.
Video: Here’s how the Micra, Canada’s most affordable car, is built
But, if comparisons are the context by which we rank automobiles how, then, do we judge Nissan‘s recently announced Micra? The new micro-car’s calling card, if you’ve been paying any attention to television, newspaper and online ads, is its incredible $9,998 price tag. We Canadians – especially those hailing from La Belle Province – very much appreciate a bargain, but comparisons are difficult when no one offers anything near the ten grand mark. Chevrolet’s cheap and cheerful Spark? $11,945. Traditional bargain basement Hyundai? The least expensive car they sell starts at $13,549. If one wants to cross-shop the new Micra, at least the entry-level base S model (more on that qualification in a moment), you’re looking through the used car classifieds.
2015 Nissan Micra
Liz Leggett, Driving
Nor can one really judge a $9,998 in the same way you would more expensive models. Do the people who would be enticed by that sub $10,000 MSRP really care about maximum horsepower or how quickly their bargain basement econobox can accelerate to 100 kilometres an hour? Of course not. Oh, safety, reliability and perhaps resale value will figure highly in the equation, but a prospective Micra owner couldn’t care less about cornering grip, let alone how many g’s the micro Nissan can generate around a skid pad.
The good news is that the Micra does drive beyond its sticker tag. Formula One — or even family sedan — performance may be beyond its purview, but with 109 hp wrung from its little 1.6-litre four-banger, the Micra is hardly pokey. Indeed, mated to the base five-speed manual, it borders on spunky. Nor will you need to row said five-speed like a mad cabbie to keep up with traffic; there’s enough torque (107 pound-feet at 4,400 rpm) that the engine doesn’t need to be buzzed to the point of thrashiness to make decent forward progress. If anything, the Micra’s noise, vibration and harshness (NVH) is more subdued than most of its competitors.
Mating the little four-banger to the four-speed automatic (more cogs and even a CVT trannie were considered but a more sophisticated autobox would have raised the Micra’s MSRP precipitously) slows things down a little. Average, unremarkable or undistinguished may be a better descriptor of the performance of the automatic-equipped Micra, but even here it never feels truly lethargic. Also encouraging is that my manual-equipped tester averaged 6.5 L/100 km over a mixed 100-kilometre route, substantially less than the 7.7 L/100 km rating reached by Natural Resources Canada’s new (and more stringent) five-cycle testing.
Far from being a slow econobox, the 2015 Nissan Micra is actually pretty spunky on the track. Just don’t expect Corvette-like cornering or anything, though.
Liz Leggett, Driving
The history of the most affordable car in North America
The same adequacy applies to the Micra’s ride and handling. The base model’s tires are tiny little 185/60R15 affairs so there will be no hairpin heroics in which a Micra (even adorned with Nissan’s only slightly pretentious racing stripe) passes a Corvette on the inside of an ess turn. But, again, the Micra will not leave you floundering like a rhino on rollerskates trying to chase rickshaws around corners. The electric steering is a little numb and the Micra will move around a bit at highways speeds (perhaps as a result of gearing its steering for its incredibly tight turning circle), but it is no worse than any other subcompact in this regard. Nor is the ride so jarring that it will send anyone scurrying for a Cadillac (or a Honda Civic, for that matter). The Micra is built on the same “V” platform as the Versa Note so the ride and handling is very similar.
Nor, as Christian Meunier, president of Nissan Canada stresses, is the Micra an ugly car. Au contraire, it is cute as a bug, not too dissimilar from Fiat’s 500 (the two-door model, not the how-did-they-make-it-that-ugly four-door 500L) with a spunky appeal, especially with those only-slightly-ambitious racing stripes.
Ditto for the interior, which, surprisingly, has something of an air of quality. Materials do not — and this needs to be stressed — look like they were sourced from the Eastern Bloc. Yes, the plastic of the old-school hard variety and, likewise, the mouse fur adorning the headliner will never find its way into an Audi. But neither does it appear truly cheap. The panel gaps are amazingly uniform and there’s even a few chromed trim bits to be found. The audio system, even in the base $9,998 model, will belt out some tunes and play a CD.
That said, the base model is a bit of a bare cupboard compared with more expensive cars. Besides the radio there is a robust heater, but pretty much everything else is a move up the option list. Air conditioning, power windows, Bluetooth and USB integration are all available (a navigation system, which would have required antennas to be built into the framework, is not available at any price).
The inside of the base 2015 Nissan Micra is, as expected, rather bare. Expect to pay more for options such as air conditioning, USB and Bluetooth.
Liz Leggett, Driving
And herein, should you be wanting to poo-pooh Nissan’s grand pricing experiment, would be the place to start. If you want any of those adornments, the next step up the ladder from the $9,998 trim is the $13,298 S model with air conditioning and automatic transmission (as well as cruise control). Oh, Meunier stresses that the $13,698 manually-equipped SV model does remain the cheapest car in Canada with air conditioning, USB and Bluetooth availability, but its advantage is not nearly as great as that dramatic sub $10,000 entry price might suggest.
Gallery: The 11 most affordable cars in Canada
Nonetheless, Nissan is focused on sussing out a new clientele, namely those for whom a poor credit rating and other fiscal hardships might find them shopping used rather than new. Besides the existing New Graduate and New Canadian financing program, Nissan Canada is offering a new Micra Opportunity financing mechanism open to those who might not qualify for loans through traditional programs.
Of course, it carries a slightly heftier interest rate — 9.98% versus 5.99. But, according to Andrew Wilton, chief marketing manager for Nissan Canada’s small cars, the difference in monthly payments on a base $9,998 Micra over 60 months is only 20 bucks a month — $201 versus $221. That said, Nissan does offer zero per cent financing over 84 months on its larger, better equipped Versa Note that is not available on the Micra, meaning that, at the top of the Micra’s range, the uptick to a Versa is not as great as that attention-grabbing starting MSRP might indicate.
The lesson, of course, is that bargain-hunting is still a skill for the informed and dedicated. It’s not as easy as simply assuming that such a dramatically low starting MSRP will always result in dramatic savings. Qualifications aside, however, it cannot be denied that Nissan is now offering the least expensive new car in Canada. And, even when its upscale variants are compared with similarly priced competitors, it more than holds its own.
2015 Nissan Micra
Liz Leggett, Driving