All the right ingredients for millennials
Model should appeal to the new Holy Grail of automobile customers
As an older millennial, I’m continuously told by marketing people that I’m the Holy Grail of car customers.
I have no kids, I live downtown, have decent disposable income and can appreciate an out-of-town weekend adventure to Montreal or up north to Tobermory, so the new 2017 Nissan Qashqai should be right up my alley.
On a quick trip to Nashville, Tenn., a place that Nissan’s North American HQ calls home and a city that is now overrun with hipster millennial folk like me, we were able to drive the Qashqai for the first time in its natural habitat. Interesting fact: Nissan was the top-selling brand among millennials last year and the Qashqai should help keep that record going. Afamiliar drive Driving around visiting little coffee shops, stopping for hipster artisan doughnuts, passing bars with live music and hunting for Nashville’s many colourful murals, the Qashqai felt completely familiar. People shopping this segment want something easy to drive, easy to park and essentially unobtrusive, and the Qashqai is all those things. With its compact dimensions and decent sightlines, the 360-degree, top-down reverse camera makes parking ridiculously painless.
The Qashqai is powered by a naturally aspirated 2.0-litre four-cylinder with 141 horsepower and 147 poundfeet of torque; a six-speed manual transmission and front-wheel drive are standard, while a CVT and allwheel drive are options. It all works as expected — no podium finishes, but getting to highway speeds and passing slower cars can be done easily enough. The CVT, like many other such transmissions, drones under full acceleration and could be more responsive, but it’s generally acceptable.
More nimble and easy to manoeuvre than its bigger Rogue sibling, the Qashqai is predictable and even verges on sporty. I don’t mean sporty as in Fast and Furious, but the crossover feels sporty simply because it has a willingness to change directions and juke around town. How does it compare to the competition? Speaking of the Juke, the Qashqai is much more practical and more approachable than its funky, frog-faced sibling, so Nissan doesn’t think they will step on each other’s toes. People who want a sportier, more unique and unconventional crossover will go for the Juke and its turbo engine with more horsepower and torque (personally, I love the Juke, especially the NISMO one), but if cargo capacity, more leg room and not standing out too much are their priority, the Qashqai can meet that need.
With nearly double the cargo ca- pacity of the Juke, the Qashqai has 648 L of cargo space, which opens up to a big 1,730 L with the second row folded flat. The larger Rogue, meanwhile, offers 1,112 L and 1,982 L with the seats folded flat. Moving outside the Nissan family, the Rogue has slightly more total cargo capacity than the Honda HR-V (657 L and 1,631 L with the seats folded) and certainly looks less dorky. And although it’s not as fun to drive or as good-looking as the Mazda CX-3, it does have far more cargo capacity. All the driver assists Basically, the Qashqai offers all the same features the bigger Rogue does: standard heated seats, available forward emergency braking with pedestrian detection, lane-departure warning and prevention, blind-spot monitoring, rear-cross traffic alert, the excellent around-view monitor with moving object detection, adaptive cruise control, remote engine start, hill-start assist, a heated steering wheel and more. Like most other systems, the lane-departure warning is too sensitive and annoying, so I just turn it off.
The interior is also familiar and inoffensive. Nothing about it screams “segment leading,” but it has a clean, user-friendly layout and doesn’t look or feel terribly cheap. Afew missing things The Qashqai has missed out on a few key areas that I, along with many other millennials, are looking for. For one, it only has one USB port and it’s not a fast charging one. The car also isn’t compatible with Apple CarPlay or Android Auto, meaning the USB port is pretty much useless to me.
Most cars these days should have quick-charge ports in the front and back so my passengers and I can get our phones charged up for all the Instagramming and Snapchatting we millennials apparently do so much.
The other strange thing is that although it is smaller and presumably lighter, the Qashqai has the same fuel economy as its bigger Rogue sibling. Rated at 9.1 L/100 km in the city, 7.5 on the highway and 8.4 combined for the AWD model with the CVT, it is also less fuel efficient than the comparable Honda HR-V (8.9/7.5/8.2 L/100 km), which is OK because it has more torque and definitely feels a bit more alive. The verdict The 2017 Nissan Qashqai is a solid new offering in a very competitive segment. Although it doesn’t rise above and beyond its competition, it is non-offensive in nature because it does mostly everything right — combined with its affordable price, that means it will sell boatloads.
Generally, Nissan Canada sees the Qashqai buyer not as someone who wants a smaller Rogue, but someone who wants crossover features for a compact car’s price. It sees the main competitors for the subcompact crossover as the obvious Honda HR-V and Mazda CX-3, but also the Mazda3 hatchback and Volkswagen Golf. Not being pigeonholed into one segment seems like a pretty smart decision.
And let’s face it, millennials hate being pigeonholed and labelled as millennials. For the Qashqai to be a hit with “my people,” it has to be priced right and have all the right features, but it also has to be marketed properly.
There are far too many companies and automakers who talk down to millennials, and it’s enough to drive them away.
Still, the Qashqai has all the right ingredients to be a success, whether you’re a millennial or not.