Nissan Micra review

This is the new Nissan Micra – this sixth generation of the car, albeit one that has less than ever to do with the classic badge. Or is it a classic badge? It’s certainly got history, but perhaps not the cachet that Nissan might like to think.

Plenty of us were ferried about in them as youngsters or learned to drive in one, but that hasn’t generated the sort of winsome nostalgia that other car names might enjoy.

Like the Renault 5, perhaps?

Well exactly like the Renault 5. Funny that car should come up, of course, because the 5 and the Micra share a significant amount of their underbits with each other. Actually that undersells it a bit – better to say that the Micra is a Renault 5 with the badges swapped out and a few tweaks to the bodywork.

Which isn’t necessarily bad – even a less chic Renault 5 is more stylish than the likes of the Peugeot e-208 or Vauxhall Corsa Electric. But it does have to go up against the likes of the Mini Cooper Electric, Fiat 500e, Fiat Grande Panda, Kia EV3 and Hyundai Inster.

Nissan reckons the headlights are meant to evoke the bug-eyed third generation car, which was apparently the most popular (by whose standards?), but we can’t see it. And at any rate, it comes back to that notion as to whether the Micra has enough warm and fuzzy good feeling for anyone to particularly care.

So it’s basically the same?

Basically, yes – the car uses the same motors and batteries, and Nissan admits that it hasn’t made any tweaks to the drivetrain, so it’s all very familiar if you’ve been behind the wheel of the Renault. Except the sense of fun has somehow been excised.

The Micra is an interesting exercise in how influential design and marketing fluff has become, and perhaps it means reassessing the 5 somewhat once you’ve driven the off-brand version.

How so? 

Well, Nissan will try and have us believe that the Micra is the more fun option, but it turns out a lot of character was in the front and rear lights. Shorn of the Eighties nostalgic beats that the Renault enjoys, the car could be construed as a bit meh.

It’s not bad – the ride is very good, economy decent enough at just under 4 miles per kWh with a lot of motorway miles on our test route and it’s a respectable enough car to drive, but it’s not fun. The boot is decent, but space for five is massively compromised (and Nissan’s saying this is a small family car, we’re not demanding a lot of it) and there’s not much clever stuff in here to improve your life that a Dacia or a Skoda would throw in.

Are the numbers the same as the 5?

The price is exactly the same – both the 5 and the Micra start from £21,495 including the new plug-in grant. The top spec Micra is £130 cheaper than the Renault at £28,365, though. Take care of the pennies…

There are 40kWh and 52kWh battery options to choose from (see the Buying tab for more details), the former with a 121bhp motor and the latter offering 148bhp. They’ll manage 93mph top speeds (same as the R5) and get to 62mph from rest in 9.0secs and 8.0secs respectively. That last one is 0.1secs slower than the 52kWh 5. Oo-er.

Charging times are also the same – the 40kWh battery charges up to 80kW, the 52kWh battery up to 100kW if you find a rapid enough charger, making for 15 to 80 per cent charge in 30 minutes. There’s an 11kW AC charger as standard for more sedate charges.

There’s one area where the Micra makes a better case for itself – the range levels are slightly improved on the donor car, with the 40kWh car managing up to 198 miles of WLTP range and the 52kWh car up to 260 miles. A marginal increase of six and eight miles respectively on the Renault.

If we judge Nissan harshly, it’s because the company massively dropped the ball on electric. It wasn’t late to the party, like Honda, which has turned up when everyone else was doing the washing up. Nissan practically invented the modern generation of electric cars with the Leaf – but it’s about to launch the third generation of that car as a generic crossover.

This Micra is a cynically rebadged Renault with apparently no input from Nissan. Where’s all that innovation gone, that experience with electric powertrains? You won’t be unhappy if you buy one of these Micras, but the only reason not to get the R5 is if you specifically don’t like it.