Review - 2006 Nissan Micra 1.2 Initia

Nissan Micra Initia

Ok we’ve been busy recently testing several models. The first one, as you can see is the Nissan Micra. Specifically the 2006 1.2 litre ‘Initia’ spec car in three door format.
While this is a new test, this generation Micra is in the process of being replaced with what we feel is a rather ugly, overly cheap looking Chinese manufactured model that has a very anonymous look to it. This, the third generation of car to carry the Micra name has a very cute look to it, with shades of the VW Beetle in its side profile.

Whatever you may think of the looks, they are distinctive and interesting, with the high headlights, wide hips that travel along the cars flank to the headlights. We weren’t keen on the looks when the car was released in 2003 but with the BMW MINI and VW Beetle demonstrating that cute is cool, the little Micra has a modern look, perhaps more modern than when it first appeared. At least it isn’t dull or boring although the looks probably appeal far more to women than guys.

As always, the first thing to address is why this model? Well the Initia isn’t the bottom-feeder model and so can hold some reasonable value. The Initia cost around £8,500 when new and can return around £4,500 today with average 10,000/year mileage. It also had a reasonable engine, a 1.2l 4 cylinder that can hold its own in all the tasks the average driver might require and the car could be spec-ed up with alloy wheels, metallic paint, electric sunroof and air-con while a single changer CD-Player was standard.

With the small car market being packed with competent competitors, the Micra needed to have some advantage over its rivals. Knowing they couldn’t beat Ford or MINI on handling, the Micra went for the easy route of cheap, well equipped cars that are in high demand, so its cutesy looks and decent equipment level for its age and price bracket are a huge advantage in standing out for the cheap car customer. The only real omission compared to brand new cars is air-con as standard and iPod/aux port.

The engine is a naturally aspirated, all aluminium, 1240cc, 16v DOHC In-line 4 cylinder engine coded CR12DE that was a development of an old CG coded engines that were revised for this generation Micra. Being all aluminium was a surprise to us, most cheap cars make do with cheap but heavy iron block/aluminium head combination. It develops just over 78bhp at 5,600 rpm and 81 lb/ft of torque at 4,000rpm. This means the 957kg Micra is good for 0-62mph in 13.1 seconds, which while it’ll never set the world alight, is far from bad in a car that cost under £9,000 when it was brand new. The car has a top speed of 104mph, perfectly adequate for a tiny little car.

The brakes comprise of perfectly adequate disc brakes at the front, drums at the rear. Don’t ever be afraid of this set-up on small cars, the brakes will stop the car just fine and keeps costs down. In fact, the Fiesta we’ve been using as a benchmark has the same set-up. the Micra was never going to explore new areas of handling, but this little car doesn’t do badly. The steering is really light, the wheel responds to every input you care to provide. At launch, the Micra had electric power steering. While that has become the standard system, at the time many cars still used hydraulic assistance and so the Micra had a huge deficiency in steering feel compared to its rivals but today it’ll provide no less than its immediate cheap car rivals.

The standard McPherson strut front suspension, torsion beam rear setup is a pleasant surprise, it’s a reasonably stiff arrangement that does well to keep body roll to a minimum. Couple that with that light feeling, fast responding steering set-up and you can start to see how this little car might give a fair amount of half decent entertainment.

You realise the logic of this set-up when you start to explore its in-town credentials. Nissan built this car to be a nipper city beast. The turning circle is frankly tiny; 9.2m which means it can turn full circle on a normal two-wide road without needing to stop and find reverse. Suddenly the overly light steering and well contained level of body roll makes total and utter sense. This little thing was put on this Earth to absolutely conquer the urban crush.

And it does. The engine is fairly eager, pulling well despite the rather limp-wristed sounding 78bhp. In fact today it’s a very powerful engine. In the endless pursuit of fuel economy, engines have lost all power. A 2010 Ford Fiesta Studio that is equipped with a 1.25l engine has to get around with a frankly insultingly pathetic 59bhp! With a 0-62mph time of 16.9 seconds and a top speed of 94mph, the little Micra looks like a Ferrari to the Fiesta’s, well Fiesta. Now the more observant of you will notice that we’ve just compared a mid-low spec Micra to a Bottom Feeder Fiesta. True, but even the original 1.0l version of this generation Micra had 64bhp so we aren’t being too unreasonable when we say the Fiesta’s state of tune is pathetic.

So can this little budget run-around get a clean sweep? Well yes, it can. Unlike the gutless Fiesta, the Micra can do motorway jaunts happily, in fact it has rather decent motorway manners, quiet and comfortable and well behaved. Road and wind noise are kept low enough so you can just about hear the engine gurgling away happily ahead of you. The noise is informative too, rather than just being a pest. This means you can hop around the city ahead of everyone else, jump on the motorway to go conquer another city and then B-Road it home and arrive happy and comfortable and the car won’t have let you down anywhere along the line. As we’ve said though, it’ll never set new standards or explore new realms but it won’t let you down or disappoint you.

As you might expect, the interior is pretty basic. However, the reason you ever bought a Nissan, in fact the only reason you ever bought a Nissan was build quality. We’ve never heard of a poorly built Nissan before, although that might change with the new 4th generation Micra. While the interior materials aren’t fantastically outstanding, they aren’t bargain bucket levels of quality. The stereo is obviously a cheap item, with nothing better than ‘Nissan’ on its facia. The whole dash unit feels solid and well put, in fact it makes genuine, solid build quality seems so easy. It makes us wonder how Nissan can get the interior, the easiest part to do a shoddy job on, of a cheap super-mini spot on and yet companies like Mitsubishi, Kia, Hyundai and even Vauxhall can’t get the materials right.

Kit wise, the Micra is in places, fantastically well equipped and in other areas, as spartan as its new price suggested. The radio is a single changer CD-Player as standard and the car comes packed with brilliantly useful cubby holes and storage places. The glove box is excellent; the face belies its cavernous capacity. It not only has two slots in the main body, but also a fixed slot for smaller items. Our standard camera, sunglasses, sat-nav and road atlas kit were lost into the huge space. There is a small, open cubby hole behind the gear stick, a cup-holder/storage bin fold out unit at the bottom of the centre console and another big cubby hole on the top of the centre console. Two phones and a charger also disappear quite nicely into that.

Disappointingly there is no Air-Con as standard, something even in 2006 we were coming to expect from all but the most basic of basic cars, but in truth that is the only black mark we’d deal out.

The seats are also a pleasant surprise. They are in no way sporty, lacking almost any major lumbar support to hold you snugly in the seat yet they are comfortable in the city and on the motorway. Adjustment is easy and solves any discomforts you may get, a major importance as they can cause a numb backside if you’re not being well supported by the seat back.

The headrests aren’t so good, serving almost no purpose, adjustment isn’t easy or simple to work out and they don’t offer any support or comfort which means they simple irritate.

The rear bench disappoints slightly too. The headrests offer slightly more function and the seats themselves are perfectly acceptable for short stints but the Micra’s Beetle-esc form means rear headroom is cut considerably. If you’re over 6 foot then you will find you can’t put your head back properly. The centre rear seat only has a lap belt but that is to be expected and the Micra isn’t the sort of car that needs or is expected to regularly carry five.

The boot is pretty sizable, if a difficult shape. Standard capacity is 371 litres, perfectly capable of getting enough junk for two people to go camping. The seats do split fold 60:40 as you would expect and that boosts luggage capacity to 584 litres, and the straight sides of the car means you can make good use of this enlarged space, although the seats don’t fold fully flat.

The boot lid creates a little problem, the boot itself looks pretty sizeable, but again as with rear passenger head room, this is cut slightly but the curved roof line, reducing some of the useful space available. The only real point of contention is the luggage rack which is nasty cheap; it breaks easily and is probably the item of least quality on the whole car.

However it isn’t all doom and gloom, as you can see there isn’t much intrusion from the rear wheel arches and what intrusion there is, doesn’t affect the useful boot space available which is flat, despite the car having a full size spare wheel, none of that useless space-saver rubbish that just irritates us. All in all, above average levels of luggage room.

The metallic paint on our test car was an optional extra, though most colours available were metallic. There was Air-Con available if the buyer stumped up £600 and this remained an option on all the models garnished with the 1.2l engine.

Again, the 14” steel wheels/plastic caps on our car was the standard set-up, although Nissan did offer rather fetching 14” alloy wheels. Driver and passenger airbags, child seat attachment, the CD-Player, ABS, Alarm & Immobiliser, electric windows and, as mentioned, a full size spare wheel were all standard kit, a pretty decent spec list for an £8,500 car.

As we’ve said, Air-Con, fully electric tilt/slide Sunroof, alloy wheels and metallic paint were the optionals.

And finally, as usual, it’s time to throw some more figures and stats at you all; running costs. If this review so far has peaked your interest and you’re thinking about getting the Micra rather than a brand new super-mini, then you’re probably cross-fingered we don’t say the engine drinks petrol like crazy. Well fear not, because this little car is more than able to hold up to the newer opposition quite comfortably.

The Fiesta Studio model we mentioned earlier, with its insulting 59bhp can achieve 51mpg on the combined cycle, a pretty decent feat and does beat our little Micra, however it isn’t the crushing you might expect. The Micra is able to achieve a very respectable 47.8mpg combined. The Fiesta does have a range advantage of about 25miles more than the Micra, but in this age of uber-frugal attitudes, we honestly expected it to be 50miles+ extra. The 7 year old engine isn’t totally outclassed on CO2 either, emitting 139 g/km compared the Fiesta’s 127 g/km. This means the 3.8 seconds longer it takes the Fiesta to reach 62mph, it’s just 4mpg more efficient and just 12 g/km of CO2 cleaner.

The Micra does gain points back against the modern Fiesta, firstly in the weight department, weighing in at 957kg compared to the Fiesta which tips the scales at 966kg. As well as this, the Micra is rated at Insurance Group 2, while the Fiesta, Group 3. It is only one group, but it does mean the Fiesta is likely to be more expensive to insure.

So basically, what we’re getting at is that your £11k odd Fiesta is not really any better than a fairly basic Micra that was released in 2006.

As we’ve mentioned, you can pick up Micra Initia 1.2’s from about £3,200 ranging to £4,800, our half spec-ed test car is today worth about £4,000, hardly a bank-breaker. We’d definitely recommend spending a bit more time, effort and cash on one that has Air-Con, you will miss it if it isn’t there. As for the rest of the range, we’d avoid the 1.0l’s as the 1.2l that replaced it is more powerful, has a far better torque figure and is just as good on fuel. There was a 1.4l and a 1.6l but the best (and most expensive) model was the 1.5 DCi, hence the reason that the 1.2l models are our pick.

Conclusion


So what can we say? Well, surprisingly, the Micra Initia gets a thumbs up. We expected it to be stodgy and slow and useless when actually it is anything but. Of course it is nowhere near a MINI or Ford in the handling department but it holds its own and is a fantastic city car, manoeuvrable, a tiny turning circle and competent with a frisky little engine that makes the whole car feel fun and eager and yet still perfectly suits the needs of a good city car.

Add in its competent motorway manners, well designed luggage and storage spaces, cute looks and respectable interior and equipment levels as well as its surprisingly competitive running costs and you may start to think, as we did, that the £4k price tag that was estimated for our test car is a fine bargain for what is a genuine all-rounder super-mini.

If you’re in the market for a city car or a super-mini, before you go and look at a nice, shiny new Fiesta, Polo, Fabia, Corsa or any of the overly cheap Korean’s, take a peek at this little gem Nissan snuck into the market back in 2006.



Nissan Micra Initia
Engine: 1240cc, 16v DOHC In-line 4
Power: 78bhp @ 5,600rpm
Torque: 81 lb/ft @ 4,000rpm
0-62 mph: 13.1 seconds
Top Speed: 104 mph
Fuel Economy: 47.8 mpg combined