2014 Nissan Micra In Detail

by Derek Kreindler

Published: February 14th, 2014

At the Canadian International Auto Show, Nissan debuted their Canadian-only Micra, an A-Segment car that takes up the Kia Rio’s one-time mantle of being the sole new car available for less than $10,000. At the show, we learned a few things about the Micra.

While the Micra uses the Versa’s 1.6L 109-horsepower 4-cylinder engine, it won’t get a CVT, but will offer a choice of a 5-speed manual or a 4-speed automatic. With the Micra weighing about 2100 lbs, it should feel nimble, but acceleration will be leisurely, given that its power to weight ratio is similar to an original Miata.

According to Nissan, the Micra has been localized for Canada with features like a rear heating duct in the floor, large, heated mirrors and a 60/40 split-folding rear seat. The crash structures have also been re-designed to meet Canadian vehicle standards, which are more nearly identical to American regulations. For a vehicle market of roughly 1 million units, this seems like an expensive undertaking. But evidently, Nissan feels that there’s some value in doing this for a product that competes in a traditionally unprofitable segment.

#Canada #Nissan #NissanMicra

Derek Kreindler

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3 of 35 comments

Hemi on Feb 16, 2014

I think it's a decent car for $10k, as are most entry level cheap cars. If that's all someone can afford, that's what they should buy. I hate taking to new college grads, barely making money at a new job, while on probation. They go out and buy used BMWs/Benz that they are then unable to pay for repairs. A friend has the first gen Versa, with regular oil changes it has been Perfectly reliable since day 1. Not a sexy car, but reliable. I was looking at one of these "tiny" cars, such as the Sonic, Spark, Fiesta and Yaris, being that I live in NYC. It would have been easy to street park, I wouldn't care about about "street scars" that cars get in NYC, would have been reliable and unattractive to car thieves. Wellll I ended up scoring a secure indoor garage spot and stuck with my original choice of a bigger vehicle. Some people have too much pride to be seen in these cars and I don't care. My only issue was as an enthusiast, how fun they are to drive. I just hate the NVH associcated with such small cars. They are very fun to zip around in traffic and park in most of NYC.

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Seat safety switch on Feb 17, 2014

The Versa and Hyundai Accent were both offered recently (last 5-7 years) in Canada at under $10k. In both cases they were super-base stripper models that were mostly used by dealerships to bait and switch upsell to a middle or high class model that compared in price to other cars in their segments. Hopefully the $9998 Micra won't be a punishment for not going with the middle/high-end Micra. Spec Micra anyone?

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- Spoonie on Mar 10, 2014
  
  Selling any car in Southern Ontario without A/C installed should be a crime. I would imagine that most buyers of this vehicle would spec it up to A/C and automagic. How good is the price once that (and it's probably packaged) box is ticked?
  
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