Cross-dressing Nissan returns to normalcy
Radical new models that become highly successful often opt for consolidation and conformity when it comes time for their first big revision. Paul Owen charts the Nissan Qashqai’s progress from the paranormal to the merely usual.
NISSAN TOOK a huge gamble when it replaced the once-popular Primera sedan with the high-rise Qashqai hatchback five years ago, but it certainly paid off.
The more adventurous image of the Q-car propelled its meteoric rise up the sales charts, and the compact crossover quickly became the best-selling Nissan in Europe. Here, in New SUV-land, the first Qashqai was a huge hit, and the recently-released secondgeneration models have some large tyre tracks to fill.
They enter a much more crowded compact-SUV sector populated by plenty of rival models, many of them inspired by the success of original Qashqai. This makes the newest Nissan appear to blend in where the old Qashqai stood out.
You’re definitely going to have more trouble picking it out from the parked masses after a visit to the supermarket.
In this regard, it doesn’t help that the latest Qashqai shares its facial features with the equally new X-Trail and Pathfinder.
The once-defining bonnet strakes are also less prominent than the previous models, and ushered more to the flanks of the latest version. It’s therefore left to size to tell the new members of the Nissan SUV family apart.
If the X-Trail appears to be a Pathfinder that’s been left for too long in a car wash, the Qashqai looks much like an X-machine that’s been shrunk to threequarter scale. Such Russian-doll conformity was never part of the original Q-car’s design brief.
This means that the new Qashqai cannot rely on stand-out design to underpin its success like the previous model could. Qualities like competence and value must lead its performance on the sales charts.
Fortunately for Nissan, the second-gen versions offer more of both, and this is some achievement given that the older Qashqai drove with a car-like dynamic and wore price stickers that were some of the most accessible in the compact-SUV sector.
Those stickers drop a further $2000 on the incoming models, proving that Nissan NZ has been able to haggle hard with those in control of the Qashqai’s source factory in Sunderland, England.
In most global markets, the new Qashqais are more expensive than before, the increases reflecting the slight body size expansion (43mm longer and 23mm wider) and the more substantial equipment levels. Entry-point ST grades get a 17’’ alloys, a reversing camera and Nissan’s trick new Connect electronic package, which allows access to phone-based Sat-Nav and other applications like Pandora via a 5’’ screen mounted on the centre console.
At the top of the range, the screen of a Ti model expands in size, the sat-nav becomes Nissan’s own, there is an overview camera worthy of a Range Rover, and all the latest driving aids like blindspot monitors, moving object detectors, automatic high/low beam adjusters, and intelligent self-parking systems are present and correct.
To chassis stability aids like ESP, electronic brake force distribution and ABS, all new Qashqais add a self-levelling system called Active Ride Control and a steering aid that brakes individual wheels when sensors predict that the vehicle may be about to either sledge into understeer or break loose at the tail.
Technophiles will find that the new Qashqai range has more tricks up its sleeve than most cars spanning price positions that start at $35,990 (2.0 petrol ST) and extend to $43,990 (2.0 petrol Ti).
The one chink in Nissan NZ’s otherwise impressive product planning is that you can only source the best engine of a two-motor range in the one equipment specification.
This means you cannot enjoy the extra drive-ability and towing capability of Qashqai’s new 1.6litre 96kW/320Nm turbodiesel and all the electronic magic of a Ti model at the same time. The diesel might make a bit less power than the 2.0litre 106kW/200Nm petrol four alternative, but its extra grunt makes it more compatible with Qashqai’s seven-speed stepped variable-geared transmission.
It also sips fuel far more gently at an official 4.9litres/100km instead of the petrol’s already-impressive 6.9litres/100km.
Nissan NZ is forecasting that only 15 per cent of new Qashqai buyers will opt for the $42,990 diesel, but I can’t help thinking that such pessimism is due to the lower equipment levels that the compression-ignition powertrain is saddled with.
Due to the petrol’s reduced access to motive force, the other 85 per cent of prospective Qashqai buyers will be selling their driving souls to the equipment devil.
Given all the electronic enhancements and a quicker-geared steering rack, the new Qashqai handles corners with a bit more decorum and accuracy than before. The counter-side is that the driver doesn’t feel quite as engaged, feeling more like someone who is guiding the vehicle rather than controlling it.
That said, this is one of the strongest new entrants into what is rapidly becoming our most popular new vehicle segment this year. The new Qashqai has the potential to achieve a popularity that will make it the envy of every politician contesting the election, but it will no longer be on the back of distinction.