Car: Nissan Note 1.5 dCi range
Prices: £11,295-£14,195 - on the road INSURANCE GROUPS: 4-5
Emissions: 119g/km
Performance: (1.5dCi 85bhp) 0-60mph 13.3s / Max Speed 102mph
Fuel Consumption: (combined) 55.4mpg
Safety: Twin front and side airbags, ABS with EBD and EBA
Dimensions: Length/Width/Height, 3990/1530/1690mm
NISSAN HIT THE RIGHT NOTE
Our Rating: 7.6 / 10
Nissan’s British-built Note dCi offers something a little different to the hatchback norm. Andy Enright reports
Don’t you just love management jargon? In a previous life, I used to work for a guy who was forever ‘touching base’, ‘running things up flagpoles’, ‘pinging the cost accountants’ and recognising that the ‘squeaky wheels got the grease’. Although they’d never admit to it themselves, Nissan would probably like us to adopt one of Dave’s other hackneyed terms. When it comes to evaluating a car like the Nissan Note dCi, it pays to ‘think outside the box’.
For eons, the small car market was divided into superminis and family hatches. Think cars of the size of the Ford Fiesta and Escort respectively. As superminis got bigger and more sophisticated, citycars started slotting in beneath them to fill the vacuum but this level of niche marketing was still insufficient to fill the demands of a rapidly fragmenting car market. Somewhat surprisingly, the answers came from cars like the Renault Espace. Customers enamoured by the practicality and utility of these models demanded those features in ever smaller packages.
Mini MPVs started to become a real hot ticket around 1997, the market kicked off by Renault’s Megane Scenic. Even this wasn’t enough. Urban buyers demanded multiple cup holders, folding and sliding rear seats, auxiliary power outlets and all the other tricks that bigger MPV-style vehicles were offering and the supermini MPV was born - models like the Toyota Yaris Verso and Vauxhall Meriva making hay. It seems that Nissan want to move the game even further along with their Note, recently improved with body-coloured bumpers, new trim levels and a series of specification tweaks.
It’s a tough car to categorise, falling most closely under the banner of supermini-MPV. The thing is, it’s a lot bigger than its rivals and it looks very different too. Most supermini-MPVs are, to be frank, pretty gimpy looking things that any person with a few Y chromosomes wouldn’t really savour being seen in. The Note is different, with a far more dynamic look, a pugnacious wheel-at-each-corner stance and some length to its bonnet. Indulge us blokes. We want a bit of bonnet, even if we’re buying a supermini MPV.
The facelifted model we’re looking at here has been on the receiving end of tweaks including a reshaped bumper and bonnet, revised headlights and a shiny black front grille. At the back, the tail lights are darker and models with parking sensors get them incorporated more neatly into the bumper.
It’s on the inside, however, where the most significant changes to the Nissan Note have taken place. All models now have better-quality, soft-touch interior plastic and mildly redesigned instrument graphics.
The 1.5-litre dCi engine that powers this version of the Note now comes only in 86PS guise. This will do the 0 to 60 sprint in 13.3 seconds ad reach a top speed of 102mph. Clio owners will already be familiar with this engine and Micra owners may well also have a sense of déjà vu. In addition, the co-operation between Nissan and Renault sees the Note running on a lengthened version of the platform that Renault’s Modus sits on. This combination of sunk investment and modular versions of existing technologies allows Nissan to turn out new niche models relatively inexpensively and the Note dCi, assembled in Britain at Nissan’s Wearside plant, has come to market in a relatively short period of time.
Fuel economy is 55.4mpg on the combined cycle. Naturally, this will dip if you load your Note up to the gunwales but not by a disastrous amount. What’s more, this engine has a beefy 147lb/ft of torque to rely on, which means that it’ll pull a loaded vehicle without too much rowing with the gear lever. That’s as much as a BMW 320i by the way.
Originally unveiled at the 2004 Paris Motor Show as the ‘Tone’, the Note is part of a conscious move on Nissan’s part away from slow selling ‘conventional’ categories – as exemplified by the Almera and the Primera – and into more lucrative and exciting niches. Cars like the Note follow interesting models like the X-Trail, the Micra C+C and the 350Z coupe.
The Note shares a connection with the X-Trail in that they were both designed by
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