Specifications
Price:
From £16 199 (Visia FWD) to £22 149 (Tekna 4WD). Range spans £13 499-£22 149.
On sale:
From June, 2007 in Europe (2.0 dCi), March (rest of range) and South Africa from September 2007.
Engine:
1994cc, four cylinders, 16 valves, turbodiesel, 112kW at 4000rpm, 320Nm at 2000rpm.
Transmission:
Six-speed gearbox (auto optional), front or all-wheel drive.
Performance:
(FWD) 190km/h, 0-100km/h 10.5sec, 6.63 litres/100km official average.
It's a jungle out there. Ford says its Fusion is "tough on the streets" - and now the Nissan Qashqai is "urbanproof". The premise is simple; buyers are bored by routine hatchbacks and crave something that looks tough and makes them feel secure, which might also be fun to use, and is practical.
That's why very logical people buy compact MPV's and others buy compact SUV's but very few people need an SUV. They just like the image, the robustness, the tall stance, the suggestion that its owner might do interesting things.
So the nuances are becoming very subtle. Would you look at a Qashqai and say: "That's a 4x4"? It might be, although the Qashqai plays down the attributes that get SUV-haters going. Yet it certainly isn't a simple hatchback.
This is a crucial distinction. Nissan no longer makes a simple, Golf-sized hatchback for Western Europe. Very few people bought the last one, the Almera, and Nissan believes the market for such cars is contracting. So the Qashqai (named after an Iranian tribe) replaces the Almera with a car people will buy, or so Nissan hopes.
The Qashqai looks like a scaled-down Nissan Murano(one of the best-looking SUV's on the planet), occupies no more road space than the hatchbacks it aims to oust and doesn't weigh much more than they do, either. To hate this car is to be irrational.
Like the new Honda CR-V, the Qashqai has a sleek, racy-looking top half and a butch-looking bottom half. Unlike the CR-V, the two halves meld together well. The chief architect of the Qashqai's looks is Stephane Schwarz, the intense-looking young man who has starred in several Nissan TV ads.
The Qashqai has a "face" which, if the Nissan badge were replaced by a Mercedes tri-star, would make it look like a product of Germany and not the UK (the Qashqai was part-designed in Paddington, engineered in Cranfield and is built in Sunderland).
So, is the Qashqai a 4x4 or not? Depends. Cheaper ones, with a 1.6-litre, 80kW engine or a 1.5, 84kW turbodiesel, have simple front-wheel drive. But if you go for a two-litre, be it petrol (105kW) or turbodiesel (87kW) you can have "All Mode" all-wheel drive.
Three settings
These engines can also be matched to an auto transmission, a continuously variable unit for the petrol engine, a conventional six-speed for the diesel. The petrol engines are Nissan designs; the diesels are from partner Renault, which will later use the Qashqai's new platform for its own products.
The 4x4 system has three settings. You can choose mere front-wheel drive, which might give a tiny fuel-economy improvement. You can turn the knob to "lock", which splits the drive half-and-half to front and rear, useful for very slippery conditions such as snow, sand or mud. (How smug the pilloried 4x4 club must have felt.)
Or, as most people surely will most of the time, you can set it to Auto. That makes the Qashqai mainly a front-wheel-drive car but a clutch system diverts effort to the rear wheels when that would reduce the fronts' chances of slithering.
It's a predictive system as well as a reactive one so, as well as sensing wheelspin up front, it can anticipate when it might happen using sensors and comparing the data with what ought to be happening.
So the Qashqai is a friendly, useful 4x4, but it's not meant to be a full off-roader. On-road, it steers quite precisely and stays remarkably level when cornered briskly; it feels like a good modern hatchback in which you simply sit higher.
Willing and smooth
To make it respond in this way has called for suspension able to resist a tendency to lean, which usually results in a firm, fidgety ride, but the Qashqai is supple enough not to annoy you. You can feel the 4x4 Auto mode keeping the handling tidy, too. It works.
I drove two two-litre Qashqai units. The petrol's willing and smooth, the diesel is punchier at low speeds, ultimately faster and more economical (6.63 litres/100km official average).
The Qashqai, then, is good to drive, but where it scores over regular hatchbacks is that it's also good to be in. Ample front headroom and the high vantage point give a fine illusion of extra space and the clean-looking, almost stark, fascia is neatly detailed and softly padded.
Press a button with a logo like an aeroplane and a cool, diffuse breeze blows through the cabin's upper level and a sun-resisting glass roof (fixed) is optional. Trendily named trim levels begin at Visia, rise through Acenta and climax at Tekna; options include leather trim and satnav system with a reversing camera.
I like the Qashqai because it is genuinely, usefully different. It's not quite an MPV because the rear seats don't slide and ultimately it's not roomy enough. But if you're looking to replace a regular hatch, the Qashqai offers a taste of a different world.
It might represent the future of the family car. - The Independent, London