A face only a mother can love, as quirky as a 2000' Renault before their design team got a full lobotomy and boot camp at a tap water factory.
Inside, a mix of small and big, first, I fit perfectly well in the seat, (i'm 1.85) no need to spend 3 hours adjusting the least painful position to be able to use pedal and steering at the same time. But once i'm in position, no real way to move, if the cat start to vomit on the back seat or -a- baby lose his sippy cup i'm fracked... have to stop and manage the crisis from outside. Meanwhile, fold the back seat and the trunk gets more roomy than... uhm... something roomy... (I first I had a metaphor including my sister's genitalia, but maybe it's not that fit for the topic).
Driving position is high, you get nice big side mirrors with on the left 2 small downview helper mirrors. The rearview is symbolic, an aircraft carrier my be spot-able if it's less than 1 nm... but road going stuff are more guessed than seen... Main instrument cluster got everything even indicator for the city light "on" which is more than missing on my Note (it just scream "fuck you I was the cheapest car of the lineup for a good reason").
Steering wheel is small and in leather-ish material... really confortable.
Now... the bad...
The aircon panel double as a driving mode panel. On top you have the 2 setting mode switch, press aircon, all the button and dials act on the climate control. Press driving mode... the same button and dials control the engine/CVT behaviour. It's a textbook bad design, every manual on human interface design tell to avoid these kind of multi "mode" behaviour for software interaction. And that's for computer software/ database design. For a car that's beyond stupid. Yes the Oled display are cute, but you better have a poodle trained as copilot to handle them, because while driving it's absolutely unmanageable. We don't reach the level of stupidity of the Darwin inspired BMW iDrive, but it's a close second. The parking brake handle is on the left of the center console... like for the eurospec model... Too much cost cutting here. You don't have rear foglight... but you got the cutout because it's the same bumper as for the eurospec model... Carlos... frack you cheap bastard...
The ugly, 1.5 engine with Nissan xCVT gearbox... The throttle feels like somekind of placebo... Flooring it for a quick exit at a crossing when the red light change. Give you the same reaction as when you asked your highschool sweatheart for some buttsex before the final exam, "Noway... hehhh... wait... maybe... blehhh... let's do as usual instead..." a scene where you are merely a spectator instead of an actor... It don't just feel underpowered, it feels totally disconnected... like commanding a battle ship... you ask for "full ahead" and somebody or something do it for you a bit later. Braking is exactly the same... It feels more like a magically induced slowdown rather than pushing some pump to compress some plates on a brake disk that in turn block the wheels and slow the car down.
It feels like a video game, unlike a stock 1.2 March with the old auto gearbox where you really are involved feel the road, acceleration and deceleration, engine screaming and road noise. Here, you feel in your living room on the coach playing some granturismo (yeah, not even realistic enough to feel like rFactor).
I'm sold on the quirckiness, price (1.6 milliun yens, I don't think there is cheaper out there), roomy boot.
4wd and 1600cc / turbo (180ps) with semi auto CVT expected for november... Let's hope it'll be a little more cheerfull to drive. No worry for Nissan seems they reached 300% of their monthly preorder goal in the first week...
