2015 Nissan Micra S Review – Lively Lilliputian

2015 Nissan Micra S (2 of 10)

Staring at a Monroney sticker with a four-digit MSRP would only excite you if spending a weekend clipping Sam's Club coupons while sipping Faygo is a "fun night in."

With a base price of $9,998 in the Great White North, the Nissan Micra is the definition of Quebec Special: an entry-level car in the lowest of trims and absolutely zero options. Wind-up windows. Manual locks. An actual, honest-to-goodness metal key. All it needs is a cassette deck and a bench seat to take you back to a time when parachute pants were cool and Wesley Snipes was paying taxes.

Yet, this diminutive, red hatchback is much more than its price and lack of options suggest. While my predecessor likened the Micra to the EK Civic, I'm going to take it one step further: The Nissan Micra is a four-door Mazda Miata.

The Tester

2015 Nissan Micra S [Canada]

Engine: 1.6-liter DOHC I-4, CVVT (109 horsepower @ 6,000 rpm, 107 lbs-ft @ 4,400 rpm)

Transmission: 5-speed manual

Fuel Economy (Rating, MPG): 27 city/36 highway/31 combined
Fuel Economy (Observed, MPG): 32 mpg, 50/50 city and highway, 50/50 eco-driver and small-car, fast-lane lunatic

Options: What you see is what you get, folks.

As Tested: $11,565 (sheet), approx. $8,950 USD.

"Miata with four doors? Have you completely lost the plot?" Maybe, but …

All the important ingredients from the Miata are woven into the Micra's DNA as well: light weight, just enough power to spin the little front rubber donuts, and the suspension — well, let's just call it peculiar for now as it needs an explanation all its own.

The bottom line: The Micra provided the most engaging and fun driving experience I've had in at least 12 months, and that includes all the 400+ horsepower cars that have graced my driveway over the same timeframe.

Exterior
Before we get into why the Micra is a four-door Miata, we should talk about its looks for a moment, because this is really the only area where Nissan's sub-compact could use some effort the next time around.

As much as some writers believe we shouldn't genderize car design — especially when critiquing said sheet metal — the reality is automakers pen vehicles to appeal to certain demographics: young women, older men and any combination thereof. Certain genders will be drawn to particular design cues more than others.

When I attended the launch of the Micra last year, Nissan representatives were surprisingly upfront about the car being styled to primarily capture the attention and interest of female buyers — and it shows. The Micra is a women's car whether you want to bury your head in the sand about it or not.

However, the cheap-and-cheerful demeanor of the Micra isn't so dissentious that male buyers should disregard this wonder of economical automotive manufacturing. In a color other than our tester's Red Alert, the Micra is a bit more palatable.

With that out of the way, the V-Motion grille is a bit of an architectural afterthought, like an addition to a family home gone awry. Fortunately, this forced design lineage only affects the Micra in the Canadian market. In other regions — where this runabout is named March — a single chrome bar floats within the grille's crevasse. Headlights are the same globally, finding their place far up the hood much like the Chevrolet Spark and even the Nissan Juke, though their placement much less visually pronounced on the Micra.

A side view of the car brings back memories of the old New Beetle and its perfectly arched roofline thanks to the Micra's semi-circular window frames. Unpainted door handles and mirror caps are noticeable but not in the same way as black plastic bumpers grabbed your attention on base model Chevrolet Cavaliers. Even though this Micra is the bottom rung on the trim hierarchy, its wheel covers still manage to look higher end than the optional alloys available on the Mirage.

There's additional unpainted black plastic at the back, but thankfully it's limited to just the door handle for the rear hatch. The taillights and bumper seem to have received more stylistic attention than one would expect for a car costing significantly less than its competitors. To top it off, the rear window also provides ample vision from inside the car — and you'll need it, as there's no back up camera on this Japanese go-kart. But, you do get a rear spoiler, so at least there's that.

Interior
Complaining about the Micra's interior materials is like going on a tirade at H&M about the quality of their $4.99 fashion-of-the-week, button-up shirts. A car that's near-as-makes-no-difference $10,000 is going to be incredibly cheap. You don't buy this type of car for its soft-touch dash and rubberized temperature control knobs. You buy it because it's usable and serviceable. The plastic knobs are almost translucent in their cheapness, but they work and that's all they're meant to do. You should feel lucky the Micra even has a tachometer in this trim.

The only complaint I have — a trivial personal preference more than anything else — has to do with the gas gauge. You are given a digital gas gauge in the Micra — and I hate it. Please, Nissan, just give me a nice little dial so I can more accurately estimate the amount of fuel in the tank.

Other than that, the seats are incredibly simple along with the rest of the interior and not something you'd want to sit in for long jaunts on the highway, but this car isn't built for long highway jaunts anyway.

Infotainment
I used to have a manual, Vulcan-powered Ford Ranger with a manual transmission. Like the Micra, it didn't have air conditioning and just a simple radio provided your anthem for the road. When I bought my Ranger, the total came out to nearly $14,000 in used condition. It also featured two speakers — one in each door. The Micra has double the number of speakers and is cheaper in new condition. Folks, by all accounts, that's a bargain!

In all seriousness, the Micra does come with a CD player and auxiliary input as standard. If you are keen on tuning into some daytime sports talk radio on the AM dial, you can do that, too.

You aren't locked into the '90s radio option, however, but you'll need to spring for the Krom or SR-trimmed Micras to get USB input, Bluetooth and display audio as standard and those models are significantly more expensive than our base model tester.

As you can imagine, audio quality with the simple four-speaker stereo is on par with listening to a alleyway catfight on a string can telephone — tinny, full of treble and all the vocals sound like they're being performed by Richard Simmons with a throat infection.

Drivetrain
Under the Nissan Micra's short hood sits the same 1.6-liter, four-cylinder engine found in the Versa Sedan and Versa Note producing 109 horsepower at 6,000 rpm and 107 lb-ft of torque at 4,400 rpm. These numbers might seem downright dismal in comparison to other slightly more expensive offerings; in the Versa Note equipped with the CVT, this engine is slow, loud and almost as annoying as Social Justice Warrior Comedy Hour. When sent through the standard five-speed manual transmission, the little four pot sings along just like the eager hatchbacks of 15 or 20 years ago. The 1.6 loves to rev, but still has a grunty note that permeates the cabin. Meanwhile, it's probably the most responsive motor in the sub-compact class with a manual that I've driven in recent memory. Even if you opt for the automatic transmission, you will still be welcomed by four real gears instead of the near-ubiquitous Nissan CVT.

However, the Micra isn't incredibly efficient. Fifth gear in the manual box is too short for highway usage and bumps up fuel consumption a tad. Again, this car is built to be a cheap city grocery-getter and not a cross-country cruiser.

The manual gearbox itself is a tad loose, but it's fairly forgiving, making missed shifts a rare occurrance. I could also say the clutch needs to provide some more feedback, but then I'm really going down the road of nitpicking. The manual in the Fiesta is better.

Drive
Even with all the text above extolling the Micra's cheap car virtues, driving it on a windy road is what makes it a real winner. The five-door Datsun absolutely loves corners — but not in the way you'd expect.

The Mazda MX-5 Miata is highly regarded as being the most-fun driver's car per dollar. That's not because the Miata puts up huge horsepower numbers or corners completely flat or does record-setting laps around the Nurburgring. Instead, it's because the Miata communicates with the driver and doesn't desensitize the driving experience. If the body rolls a little bit, you're going to feel it. When braking, the Miata's brake pedal will communicate to the driver the exact point before ABS kicks in.

The Micra does the same thing.

No, it isn't going to attack a corner as fast as a Miata, but it feels just as fast. If the brain is tricked into thinking it's going fast — even if the car is only doing a bit over the speed limit — isn't that all that matters? You don't need to be a driving hero. You only need to feel the sensation of being a driving hero.

While we all know this feeling is very hard to quantify, let alone market to the buying public, this is the Micra's greatest party trick. It's the slow car you want to drive fast — or at least think you're driving fast. And it isn't by accident that the Micra drives the way it does, especially in Canada.

Compared to overseas units, the Micra in Canada has different sway bars — front and rear — and steering tuned specifically for North American roads. This makes the Micra more chuckable, more communicative, and — as a result — a helluva lot more fun.

Unfortunately, those of you in the U.S. won't be able to enjoy the magic of this micro machine — at least not yet. A year ago, there were rumors swirling about the Micra's future availability in the U.S. They've simmered down before coming to fruition.

It's unfortunate, really, because when the answer is not Miata, it could surely be Micra.