Nissan Qashqai
Third generation of Nissan’s pioneering family SUV aims to get back on top with hybrid power and a high-tech interior
WE MOTORING JOURNALISTS have a habit of giving cars nicknames. Some are affectionate, some are witty and others are, frankly, a bit crass – but many are simply to the point. Like Cash Cow. Yep, that’s our pet moniker for Nissan’s enormously successful family SUV, an all-new version of which has just gone on sale.
In the highly unlikely event you’ve never heard of the Qashqai before, there’s a good chance you haven’t heard of Nissan either, because, in Europe at least, the Qashqai brand is almost as strong as its parent company’s. And that isn’t a hunch; it’s backed up by official market research. This third-generation model takes the baton from a car that, even at the end of its life, was the best-selling of its breed, with a total of five million finding homes across the globe. And lest we forget, it won our overall Car of the Year award back in 2014.
But while the second-generation Qashqai remained a money-maker until the very end, the truth is that it had long since been overtaken by the likes of the Seat Ateca and Skoda Karoq. The former bettered it for driving fun, while the Karoq came along shortly after and trumped both cars for ride comfort, practicality and ownership costs.
As predictably as the arrival of another Covid variant just as lockdown restrictions start to ease, the new Qashqai has grown in every direction. Not by a huge amount – roughly three centimetres in length and width and even less in height – but enough to make a noticeable difference to the amount of space there is inside, as we’ll come on to explain. It also sits on entirely new and much stiffer underpinnings, something that should help to make it better to drive – or “more dynamic”, in Nissan’s words.
The 1.3-litre petrol engines have, in effect, been carried over from the old model, although they’ve been treated to some mild hybrid technology. This means the starter motor can also act as a generator, harvesting energy that would otherwise be lost when slowing down to charge a tiny battery. It then uses that energy to assist the engine at low speeds. The gains aren’t spectacular, but the Qashqai is now slightly more efficient than the equivalent Karoq.
We tried the 156bhp engine (badged DIG-T 158) and performance is respectable. You do have to wait a moment or two after putting your foot down before a surge of acceleration arrives, and when it does, it won’t exactly throw you back in your seat, but what it will do is get you up to motorway speeds briskly enough and give you enough oomph to safely overtake
slower cars and cyclists when you’re travelling on smaller country roads.
However, the 138bhp DIG-T 140 is around £700 cheaper and has almost as much low-rev pull. It was also our favourite engine in the old Qashqai, and that’s likely to remain the case – at least until the e-power range-extender model (which is electric but also has a petrol engine to generate electricity) arrives next year.
Going for the DIG-T 140 restricts you to a six-speed manual gearbox, but it’s a good one: light but positive enough to make it pleasant to use. To have the option of an automatic, you’ll need to go for the DIG-T 158, and that ’box is smooth-shifting and responsive enough.
Ride comfort is much improved over that of the old Qashqai. With that car, you needed to choose unflattering 17in wheels if you wanted to keep your fillings. We’ve tried the new model on both 19in and 20in alloys – the latter being paired with more sophisticated rear suspension to make up for its lower-profile tyres – and it deals with bumps well. The new Qashqai isn’t soft and floaty like the rival Volvo XC40, so there’s a small amount of fidget along most roads, but thanks to tight control, you aren’t bounced around along undulating roads as though you were riding a space hopper.
We’re less convinced about Nissan’s assertion that the Qashqai is now fun to drive. While it’s certainly more agile than its predecessor, it isn’t as rewarding or capable as an Ateca or Toyota C-HR. We’d like a slightly better sense of connection with the front of the car, something that would be helped by the steering wheel naturally returning to centre more positively in your hands on the way out of faster corners. That said, the steering works well around town, where it’s light and easy, and the Qashqai feels stable and planted at motorway speeds.
While we’re on motorway manners, there’s a fair amount of road noise over coarser surfaces, although the same is true in the Ateca and Karoq if you go for 19in wheels. Wind noise is well suppressed by class standards, though.
The driving position is superb: the seats are comfy, the pedals line up well with the steering wheel and the controls for the air conditioning are chunky and easy to find without diverting too much of your attention away from the road. Factor in a big upgrade in interior quality and the new Qashqai is a genuinely pleasant car in which to rack up big miles.
Infotainment isn’t a strength, but neither is it a reason not to buy a Qashqai. We’re slightly surprised Nissan hasn’t heavily upgraded its rather dated operating system for a brand new model so crucial to the company’s success; the graphics still look fairly crude. You do get Apple Carplay and Android Auto smartphone mirroring on all but entry-level Visia trim, though, so you can bypass Nissan’s software that way. The screen measures a respectable 9.0in on N-connecta models and above and 8.0in on the cheaper trims.
And what about practicality, an area in which the old Qashqai was left behind by newer rivals? Well, you won’t notice a huge difference if you’re sitting in the front, but there’s noticeably more knee room in the rear – precisely 22mm more, we’re told. Even if you go for the optional panoramic roof, there’s enough head room for six-footers, and we suspect the ceiling is even higher in models without this feature.
The rear seats don’t slide back and forth like they do in some versions of the Karoq and Volkswagen Tiguan, but the Qashqai does have rear doors that open to 85 degrees – wider than any other car’s in the class. This really helps access, and you’ll find it a blessing when you’re putting kids in child seats.
There’s an even bigger improvement when it comes to boot space. A total of 504 litres below the parcel shelf is almost as much luggage room as you get in an Ateca or Karoq, something that’s been made possible by the new car’s greater boot depth and longer overhang behind the rear axle. The false boot floor – a feature owners of the previous model were big fans of – returns, allowing you to raise the floor when you don’t need maximum luggage capacity to reduce the lip at the entrance and give you a big well underneath. One side of the false floor is carpeted, while the other has a wipe-clean surface – handy for when you’re carrying muddy boots.
Nissan expects only 1% of buyers to go for entry-level Visia trim; it’s really there to hook you in with a tempting starting price of £23,535, which undercuts both the Ateca and Karoq. The most popular choice is expected to be N-connecta, and we reckon that’s the best bet, because as well as the larger infotainment screen, you get a 360-degree bird’s eye view camera, dual-zone climate control, keyless entry and a 12.3in digital instrument display. Range-topping Tekna and Tekna+ are expected to sell well too – and the former is worth considering if you want an electric tailgate, wireless phone charging and head-up display.
To find out exactly how the new Qashqai stacks up against the Karoq and Ateca, you’ll need to pick up a copy of next month’s issue; we’ll be putting all three cars through our full array of real-world tests in a back-to-back comparison. However, it’s clear from this early drive that Nissan has a genuine contender. So, while the new Qashqai won’t revolutionise the car market like the original model did back in 2007, it’s undoubtedly back at the pointy end of the class.