Nissan Micra review

You’re fine in the Micra if you’re up front – it’s a comfortable cabin, with decent seats and wind noise kept mostly in check aside from a few whistly bits at speed. We don’t like the quality of the plastics on the dashboard, which feel brittle and hard. We can’t be distracted by a meagre strip of padded vinyl across the middle.

It does look very familiar in here...

That’s because it’s very familiar if you’ve been inside a Renault 5 – hardly anything has changed apart from the badges and a diminished sense of fun. It makes you wonder what you actually get with this car being a Nissan. There are a couple of Mount Fuji Easter eggs around the car, but the windscreen still proudly displays the rooster that Renault’s put on there, a national symbol of France. You’d think someone could have scraped that off.

The infotainment graphics are the same as the 5, you get the smart integrated Google Maps satnav setup and access to Google’s app store, so everything is very clear and mostly well laid out, it’s just not in any way distinctive to Nissan. Perhaps a good look at the Volkswagen Group is in order to see how things could go.

Is it practical?

Nissan touts the Micra as a small family car for five, but there’s really not much legroom back there, so think of it as a car for one or two up front and occasionally people in the back - then it’s a bit better. The Volkswagen Up felt like it had more room than this in the back.

You’ve got 326 litres of boot space with the seats up and 1,106 litres with the seats knocked down, which is a fairly good amount. More than the Fiat 500e, Citroen e-C3 and Vauxhall Corsa Electric, but less than the Kia EV3.