Car Review: Nissan Versa

[bjarvis]

I've been driving a Nissan Versa for a week now. I hate it.

I'm not a fan of the ultra-light, all-plastic feel of the car as zips along the road. I was in constant fear it would be airborne if I encountered a breeze, a pebble or a mosquito. The turbulence trailing a semi was entirely too uncomfortable.

I could understand if not approve of the engineering decisions which lead to such a ride: it's an entry-level vehicle so it won't have the deluxe ride of a high-end car. And obviously, one of the easiest way to make a vehicle more fuel efficient is to reduce the mass of the vehicle overall.

What I don't get are a number of very obvious user comfort decisions which seem to be to have been weighted in the direction of annoying the hell out of the driver.

There are no interior lights for people in the front seats, as I discovered these past few evenings. The sole interior light is in the far rear, accessible to the driver only with extreme contortions; I had to undo my seatbelt to reach it without overextending my shoulder. Even then, its brightness would be best described as perhaps 25% of a firefly. The "message waiting" LED on my Blackberry is brighter.

I dislike auto-locking doors on principle but I can deal with that: all four doors lock when the car approaches 10mph. What pissed me off is that all doors stay locked by default when the car is subsequently parked. IMHO, at least the driver's door should automatically unlock when the driver pulls his interior handle.

The glove compartment is too small to be useful. Seriously, I couldn't fit any map into it unless I folded the map in half yet again and pushed firmly.

I haven't been able to obtain a comfortable driver's seat arrangement even after a week of driving. I'm a pretty average build but my two choices seem to be either having my legs overextended to reach the pedals while my arms are comfortable on the wheel or having my legs comfortable while my arms overextend. I haven't been in any other car which made it so difficult to find the correct seating balance.

In short, it may be a nice car for some but the Versa is not a car I'd rent again and certainly wouldn't buy.

Comments

[billeyler.livejournal.com]

Having never driven or ridden in a Versa, I can't speak to that.

What I CAN tell is that 'it's not YOUR car.' :-)

You'd think that certain things that are considered standard in ANY car would have been resolved years ago. My 1994 Saturn SL2 had no cupholders, a serious design flaw for either the driver or passengers. Nor did it have a hinged side-view mirror, which I found out to my dismay, having backed out of my narrow driveway hitting the arborvitae a number of times.

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

One item on which my much-despised Ford Escort did right but my Honda Civic fails: the Escort had a luminescent ring around the key ignition so it was easy to find the dark. Every other car I've had made me either turn on the interior light or scratch the hell out of the area around the ignition as I probed with the key. It's a small thing but it makes such a world of difference.

[rsc.livejournal.com]

Which reminds me of the one feature of our (really jwg's) Subaru the bugs the hell out of me: the controls for side-view-mirror positioning aren't illuminated, which makes them hard to find at night.

rentacar excitement.

[trawnapanda.livejournal.com]

.
given that it's as dim as you report, this may not help; but sometimes the best way to turn the dome light on, instead of reaching WAAAAY back-and-over, is to pop open your door. Assuming you can unlock said door, that is.

Since I don't own a car, but rent 4-5x a year, I get to experience many different cars. Mr Avis does't buy Nissans, or at least, I've never been offered one. But I do get adept at finding different controls, the most urgent of which (just before I return the wretched thing) is which side is the gas-cap, and do I have to unlock it from inside.

Of course, my depth of understanding different car models is such that when my nephews ask what kind of car Mr Avis lent to me this time, my answer is along the lines of "white".

Re: rentacar excitement.

[billeyler.livejournal.com]

You DO know that the standard for some years is to have an arrow on the fuel use dashboard gauge pointing to either the left or right to indicate which side the gas tank is on? :-)

(I didn't realize that either until about 2002, when my well-traveled hubby pointed it out on our rental cars)

Re: rentacar excitement.

[trawnapanda.livejournal.com]

I do, it controls which side of the pump island one approaches - but I usually forget until I'm out of the car to check about unlocking devices (and that lever isn't in a standard place, if it exists).

The non-standard air/heat controls are annoying too, as well as the way one approaches radio/music player. But, the key part is, it's not mine, and someone ELSE does the dirty work.

Re: rentacar excitement.

[billeyler.livejournal.com]

You're indeed right on those!

[bendoutdoors.livejournal.com]

Auto-locking and unlocking behavior is usually programmable. My car has lots of different settings for when (or if) to automatically lock the doors, and which ones to unlock when I either put the car in park or take the key out of the ignition. Believe me, whenever we have a rental car Darin loves to fiddle with all the settings. I usually make him drive so he keeps busy...

[weekilter.livejournal.com]

It may be indeed programmable, but you receive it one way and unless you're ready to read the user manual (assuming that the rental company left it to be read) you're out of luck. Last May I rented a Tchevy HHR (mostly because it was fire engine red :)) and it had been a bunch of years since I drove a newer car. I cursed it for it's power locks which I never could completely get right. Nor could I get the intermittent wipers to get quite right. I did manage to find out how to cut off the radio! :)

At least you now know that the Versa is really a POS (not point of sale.) :)

[ciddyguy.livejournal.com]

Interesting that your Honda doesn't have something to illuminate the ignition, my old 83 Civic had a little LED light that shone onto it but I can't recall if it was timed or what as it's been years since I had it (got rid of it in 1998) and I think the 88 Accord had something similar too, but I've not had that car in almost 5 years now.

My truck definitely doesn't have anything to illuminate the ignition, but then again, it's the old style Ford ignition so kind of hard to miss anyway. :-)

Yeah, I hear ya when driving different cars, they all do things just a bit different and not all are easy to get comfortable in.