Nissan Qashqai 1.5 dCi n-tec
- The North-East's company car
- I've got a big problem with hitting 50
- This product works just fine
- Parking sensor meltdown
- Touching moments
- It's oh so quiet
- Is this an SUV?
- Be careful what you wish for
- Is this an SUV? Part 2
- Falling apart at the seals
- Vast difference
- Final report: The Washington Weed couldn’t quite take root
The North-East's company car
Mark picks up the new Nissan Qashqai, making him feel right at home in his native North East.
Date: 16 January 2015 | Current mileage: 3835 | Claimed economy: 74.3mpg | Actual economy: 46.8mpg
“I’ve got one of them Qashqais and that.” That’s the traditional way of telling others that one owns a Nissan Qashqai, because when you come from the North-East of England, there’s an 86.4 per cent chance that, at some point, you’ll have owned, or have someone in your immediate family who’s owned, a Nissan Qashqai.
It's as synonymous with the North-East as making incomprehensible noises at the beginning and end of every sentence, or shovelling snow with no top on.
Honestly, they’re everywhere up here. They’re everywhere everywhere, really – Nissan has sold more than 1,000,000 Qashqais worldwide since the first one launched in 2007 – but the densest concentration of Qashqais seems to be up north.
It’s a cliché, but probably true, that the sense of regional pride in the North East is stronger than normal, which would explain why there are more Sunderland-built Qashqais in-and-around the Sunderland/Newcastle area than anywhere else. It might not actually be the case – I’ll find out in due course – but it seems that way out on the road, at least.
High quality Qashqai interior is only missing heated seats
So, 1500-odd miles in the Qashqai over Christmas and it’s so far, so reasonable, aside from the constant awkwardness of parking next to another one at the Metro Centre. This Qashqai is n-tec+ specification, which as far as I can understand is above Visia and Accenta but below Tekna, and has a bit more stuff than normal n-tec by virtue of the ‘+’. What that stuff is I'll find out later, using all my powers of investigation. Remember when cars went S to SE, G to GX, L to LS? Halcyon days.
Trim minefield aside, from where I’m sitting this Qashqai seems very well specified indeed, with dual-zone climate control, front and rear parking sensors with a reversing camera, satellite navigation, DAB radio, LED daytime running lights, part-black alloys, roof rails and an epic panoramic glass roof. In context, the only thing it seems to be missing it heated front seats.
This is the second Qashqai we’ve had at Honestjohn.co,uk, the last one a first-generation car run by Dan, so it’ll be good to see how the car’s improved with the update.
On a personal level the car replaces my Renault Captur long-termer, which means I’m moving upwards within the same class of cars – the sort of neat, upwardly mobile step that car manufacturers like to think that we all make. So I’ll do some comparisons on that basis in due course as well. I’ll probably go to the Nissan factory too, what with it being "canny geet close to hyem and that."
I've got a big problem with hitting 50
Mark may be advancing in years but he's having more than a few problems approaching 50 in his Nissan Qashqai.
Date: 30 January 2015 | Current mileage: 4300 | Claimed economy: 74.3mpg | Actual economy: 47.9mpg
Clearly I have a serious problem with the mechanics of economical driving. As you can see from the figure above, the Qashqai is getting nowhere near its claimed economy. It’s doing 64.4 per cent of its official average figure, in fact.
I had a similar problem with the Renault Captur I ran before this, so the logical conclusion is that it’s me, not the car. I don’t know, but all I can say is that I’m trying really, really hard to drive as efficiently as possible: taxi driver shuffle with the gears, feather-light on the throttle, avoiding excessive speed, taking all my bricks and concrete blocks out of the boot when I don’t absolutely need them...
Yet I can’t even get to 50mpg. It’s not as though I’m crawling through traffic every day either. I work from home and the school run is less than ten minutes of virtually empty, mostly flat country B-road. Like I said, my problem, probably.
But then, I recently took part in an MPG Marathon in an Audi A3 1.4 TFSI petrol, automatic, with a driving partner. Between us we managed 64.6mpg across a 350-mile, mixed roads route – a 7.5 per cent improvement on its official average. So, I can do it sometimes.
The start/stop display is a rare sight
It’s true that it was absolute torture and required the sort of blinkered dedication to fuel efficiency (and disregard for other road users, usually those behind) that’s almost impossible in day-to-day, courteous driving
Still, 64.4 per cent in the Qashqai is quantifiably crap. I’d expect, having learned some pragmatic efficiency tips from my slow marathon, to be getting 80 per cent or so. This begs the question, what part does the car play in all this?
Well, for one thing, the car has start/stop, but I only know this for certain because the spec sheet tells me so. It very rarely works. In fact, it’s without question the least effective start/stop system I’ve ever come across in any car. I’m not sure what parameters need to be met for it to work (most of these things need the engine and outside air to be at certain temperatures, and the car’s electrics to be under minimal strain), but they’re so restrictive here that Nissan may as well not have bothered.
The gear ratios are odd at best and misjudged at worst. For example, the car doesn’t know whether it’s supposed to be in third or fourth around 30 mph, so in the extremely common the 28-32mph zone the gear shift indicator is constantly telling you to shift to fourth. To third. To fourth. To third. To fourth. To third. Linked to this, and unlike most diesels, it categorically cannot come away from a low speed roundabout smoothly in third. The lazy way out, true, but one of the classic benefits of a diesel all the same.
I’d love to know if this experience is shared with other Qashqai owners. Let the forums know…
This product works just fine
Our Qashqai is marvellous family transport but it's not proving emotional. Which is a bit of a shame.
Date: 13 February 2015 | Current mileage: 4750 | Claimed economy: 74.3mpg | Actual economy: 49.9mpg
My last Qashqai update was about trying, in vain, to achieve fuel economy approaching the car’s official combined figure. Until recently I was perservering, but keeping the digital mpg display close to 50mpg is so deflating (and borderline distracting) that I’ve stopped bothering. It’s not worth the hassle for the sake of a few pounds saved.
I’m perfectly happy to accept that I’m partly to blame for this surprisingly below-par economy performance – the Qashqai’s economy rating does tend to jump up a little whenever my other half drives it – but I do draw comfort from the car’s Honest John Real MPG rating. It shows that you lot are only mustering a few miles per gallon more than me: 53.1mpg.
That’s just 71 per cent of the claimed figure, and only five mpg short of the Real MPG figure for the last generation Qashqai’s 1.5-litre dCi engine – an engine whose official claimed average is a full 20mpg lower than this one’s.
A Qashqai outside Ikea. Standard.
Other than that gripe there’s little to report on the Qashqai at the moment, which is a good thing because it means it’s just going about doing a cracking job. We’ve even been to Ikea in it, which is the equivalent of playing Wonderwall on a brand new acoustic guitar, or drinking your own urine through a jockstrap after joining a new rugby team – it’s the standard initiation test. The mucky photo above is the fascinating proof.
Usually, the road test trip to Ikea is used to demonstrate a long-termer’s unyielding and henceforth useful ability to carry large, everyday household items – massive pictures of Audrey Hepburn and such like. However, I didn’t buy anything (we went to take advantage of the one hour of free childcare – it's worth knowing that, parents), but the trip did make me realise something about the Qashqai.
Nobody in Ikea really wants to be in Ikea. Deep down, most of us would rather be in a furniture store at the more comfortable end of middle class. Next Home or somewhere like that. But Ikea does everything, and everything it does does everything it needs to do in perfectly adequate fashion, and for a reasonable price. So we just go there, zombie-like.
I’m not saying that zombies buy Qashqais (Zombies buy cars that fall apart. Make up your own joke), but more than any car I’ve driven recently the Qashqai feels like a consumer good, in the sense that a Billy bookcase or a Shplurgentoyt shower curtain is. It’s all at once one of the best and dullest cars I’ve ever driven. Maybe I’ll grow to love it.
Parking sensor meltdown
We have a bit of a problem with our Qashqai. The parking sensors keep screaming at us. And we don't like it....
Date: 27 February 2015 | Current mileage: 5175 | Claimed economy: 74.3mpg | Actual economy: 50.4mpg
My Qashqai has a glitch. I first heard about it before I even got the car, when photographer Matt Vosper took delivery of the Qashqai to do its official start-of-term snaps. “The parking sensors keep going mental,” he said. Or words to that effect.
They still keep going mental. Front and rear parking sensors linked to cameras are part of our car’s n-tec+ specification and usually they’re great – anyone that’s spent any time with parking sensors will know that once they’re gone, they’re generally missed.
I don’t think I’ll miss these ones though. They’re like a very nervous, slightly loopy grandma sat in the passenger seat, constantly alerting you of any danger that may or may not be about to befall you, as though you don’t have any eyes, ears, arms, legs or a brain of your own.
Approach a queue of traffic: BEEEEEP! Slow down for a roundabout: BEEEEEEP! Put the car in reverse: BEEEEEEEEP! Drive through a KFC Drive-Thru: BEEEEEEEEP! I reckon I could park this thing on the underside of the moon and it would still think it was about to crash into something. BEEEEEEP!
A parking sensor yesterday. Exciting.
This is not a constant problem. In fact, it’s the arbitrary nature of the malfunction that’s most annoying. It’s not like the sensors go off whenever the car is close to something at low speed, which would make sense, rather that the grating beep tends to happen in really random fashion. Thankfully, the parking sensors and camera always actually work when parking.
I’ve even wiped the sensors – making them the only part of the car that’s ever been washed by me so far – to make sure it’s not a coating of muck that’s confusing them, which would be a fundamental design flaw, but worth trying. It’s not that.
The issue is in stark opposition to the one I’m having with the start/stop system, which remains utterly bone idle. The contrast is quite comical: one system is prone to loud and inappropriate outbursts, while another can barely even muster the enthusiasm to prove it’s still functioning. It’s like a night out with Russell Brand and Thom Yorke.
I really should get these things fixed, but they’re not terrible problems and everything else is going so well. Okay then, I’ll get these things fixed.
Touching moments
Bad cars don’t really exist any more. Bad in-car media systems still do. Luckily, the Qashqai responds well to being touched.
Date: 13 March 2015 | Current mileage: 5297 | Claimed economy: 74.3mpg | Actual economy: 49.9mpg
Bad cars don’t really exist any more. Bad in-car media systems still do. Lots of us, for better or worse, spend at least part of the day prodding on an iPad, iPhone or some other non-Apple device that’s probably just as good, but not as popular nor snappily named, and thus not as quick and easy to reference.
Anyway, these things tend to work really well. They’re intuitive. They’re logical. And even when they’re not, they’re usually customisable so that they can be.
In-car media systems are miles behind, generally, which is a bit backwards really. Because if anything they should be the most quick and intuitive systems on the market. Blindly wandering through a menu or furiously stabbing an unresponsive screen is a lot more dangerous while driving down the A1 at 70mph than it is while eating a flapjack in Costa.
The system in the Qashqai, thankfully, is excellent. In stark contrast to that in our long-term Renault Captur, which looked great but had all the logic of a Reeves & Mortimer slam poetry routine, the Qashqai’s ‘NissanConnect’ interface works a treat.
The graphics are a bit poxy, but they’re clear, and Nissan has obviously put the effort in where it matters. With Nissan’s system it’s always obvious how to make it do what you want it to do, using as few screen presses as possible.
Nissan keeps it simple with steering wheel mounted controls
And at a time in which our experience of a car is less about things like pedal placement and steering wheel adjustment (which the vast majority of cars get right now), and more about how we interact with the big screen that controls radio, music, navigation, phone calls and car settings, it’s good that Nissan has got this right.
Ironically (I think – Alanis still has me confused about what irony actually is), the key component in a good touchscreen system is physical buttons for the main functions. Volkswagen’s brilliant system has them, and so does this.
Buttons don’t make for the most attractive dashboard design (I still think this Qashqai’s cabin will have aged badly well before the car’s due to be replaced), but buttons mean there’s always an easy escape into the function you actualy want – the radio, your iPod, your phone, whatever.
It’s stuff like this that makes the Qashqai so brilliant, but also so very workmanlike: function before form, fantastically fuss-free, utterly unexciting.
It's oh so quiet
Finally our parking sensor issue has been resolved, as is another of the Qashqai's frustrating quirks.
Date: 27 March 2015 | Current mileage: 6350 | Claimed economy: 74.3mpg | Actual economy: 51.1mpg
A few weeks ago I told you how my parking sensors were going off-the-chart loopy. Here’s the link to the update, but if you can’t be bothered to click it, or you’re against the cruel practice of link farming in principle, the post can be summarized as follows:
BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!
That’s what our Qashqai used to do a lot of the time, always at low speed but otherwise arbitrarily. But because of that thing that all real men do. What’s it called, again? Procrastination, yes. Because of procrastination I learned to live with the Qashqai’s sensor-based schizophrenia.
But then it started driving me mad, so I went to Benfield Nissan in Newcastle and asked if they could fix it.
Stopiqash-Starticulminanthaqai: the Qashqai's lesser spotted Stop/Start system
Now, full disclosure. This being a press-registered car, and these updates probably being monitored by Nissan HQ (hello, Nissan HQ), there was no way I could really get to Benfield anonymously, like a normal punter. For this reason, the absolutely impeccable service I received from Benfield Nissan was a little tainted, but impeccable it was.
As Craig David never sang, I called the dealer on a Monday, dropped the car off on Friday, picked it back up on Saturday. I chilled on Sunday.
I chilled because the car was fixed. No more beeping. The issue, apparently, was a known problem stemming from a front sensor that fills with water. It’s alleviated by simply draining the water off then leaving the channel for subsequent water to drain through. It doesn’t affect all Qashqais, I’m told, but for the ones it does it’s an easy fix.
And strangely, my start/stop appears to be working more frequently since taking the car in, too. It even worked for long enough to take a picture of it - only the second ever. It felt like finding the abominable snowman. I wonder how much the National Enquirer will give me for it?
Is this an SUV?
A trip to the hand car wash place prompts us to question the very nature of our family hatchback.
Date: 10 April 2015 | Current mileage: 7200 | Claimed economy: 74.3mpg | Actual economy: 52.4mpg
We’ve recently started a new video series here at HonestJohn.co.uk, called the 10 Honest Things review. If you’ve not seen the first one, it’s about the Audi A3 e-tron and you can find it by clicking here. We’ll be doing one per month from now on, so keep an eye out for more.
Because it’s a new format, we’re starting out by covering the most popular cars on the site – one of which, funnily enough, is the Nissan Qashqai. And if you watch the video you’ll see that we’ve used this very car, our long-termer, as the review model. Which, in a catastrophic turn of events, meant I had to clean the mucky thing.
Now, if you’re well accustomed to reading long-term updates, your mouse will be hovering over the 'close tab' button now as you prepare yourself for four paragraphs of car cleaning product advertorial. But step away from the mouse, because we’re not into that here. We’re not into that mainly because I didn’t think about approaching Turtle Wax for a basket full of free cleaning products in time. This is upsetting, because now I’ve got nothing to sell on eBay.
No, this is a story about a niche. See, I did what more and more people are doing these days: took the car to one of those hand wash establishments. They’re everywhere now, it seems. Either there’s a lot more drug money to launder these days or a lot more people taking a pride in the appearance of their cars.
An actual SUV, somewhere in the coutryside
Anyway, I took the Qashqai to my local one. Usually I’d go for the cheapest wash option on the board, but as there was a video to be made I chose ‘full valet’. I felt like a king. A king!
Just 45 minutes later I returned to the car with a £20 note in my hand, because that’s how much the little chalkboard said that ‘full valet‘ would cost.
“That’ll be £25, sir”
“Erm, what? The little chalkboard says £20.”
“But it’s an SUV.”
Now, I can sort of understand why car wash places charge a bit more for an SUV – there’s probably a good five percent more body mass to rub with the sponge – but an SUV the Qashqai ain’t...
...is it? Answers on a postcard, and more on this absolute cliffhanger of a story next time...
Click here to watch the 10 Honest Things review of the Nissan Qashqai
Be careful what you wish for
When you're in the North East of England with a Qashqai, a football analogy is inevitable. Here it is...
Date: 24 April 2015 | Current mileage: 7580 | Claimed economy: 74.3mpg | Actual economy: 52.5mpg
I’m a Newcastle United fan. Poor me. As I write this, Newcastle United have just completed the most unlikely escape since Jason Orange left Take That, by winning their last game of the season – the first win in 11 games, I think – and narrowly avoiding relegation from Premier League.
Not only that, we ended up finishing above Sunderland, which felt like jumping out of the way of a runaway train at the last second, then finding you’ve landed in a swimming pool full of Haribo Tangfastics.
Why am I talking about this? Because the situation at NUFC is a ‘careful what you wish for’ one. Our current manager, John Carver, took over the team after his predecessor Alan Pardew left – a man widely derided on the terraces at the Sports Direct @ St. James’ Park Arena Outlet Stadium.
Under Alan we were sat comfortably mid-table, but playing a brand of football so unexciting that fans increasingly became agitated at a perceived lack of passion, lack of ambition, and lack of entertainment. Pardew took much of the criticism. #PARDEWOUT
So when Pardew was offered a job at his ‘home’ club, Crystal Palace, where the fans would actually like him, he took it. In his place came Our John, a dyed-in-the-wool Geordie who, to paraphrase, would “understand the fans.” His team would have passion, would entertain, would play in the spirit of the much-loved, hero-led Newcastle teams of old: Kevin Keegan’s so-called Entertainers and Sir Bobby Robson’s Champion’s League contenders.
But it unravelled quicker than Gazza's travel shell suit. Pardew’s Newcastle were boring, but at least the team gathered points – it did its job.
I drove a Citroen C4 Cactus recently so that I could make a video about it (which you’ll see on our YouTube channel shortly). The Cactus is different – unlike anything else on sale today. To prove it, look what I returned to when I parked it up recently to go to Burger King. The photo below is legit...
A Citroen C4 Cactus being mistaken for...who knows?
It’s an entertainer. On the surface, at least. And therein lies the analogy, finally. The Cactus, in my opinion, admirably aims to please but it gets some of the basics quite wrong. The driving position is awful for anyone of moderate height or above, and obvious cost cutting is everywhere. And while that might be ok if you’ve bought one for the £13,000-ish starting price, the chances are yours is closer to £18,000, which is Qashqai money.
So when I got back into my Qashqai after a week or so – my boring Qashqai – the importance of just doing the basic stuff properly came into sharp focus. It all felt so right. Being ensconced in the middle of the road was nice; mid-table, no drama. I appreciated it.
#QASHQAIIN
Is this an SUV? Part 2
Part two of last month's cliffhanger, in which a rogue hand car wash emporium tried to classify the Qashqai as an SUV.
Date: 8 May 2015 | Current mileage: 7995 | Claimed economy: 74.3mpg | Actual economy: 53.0.mpg
An update last month, which you can read here, ended with a big cliffhanger about whether or not the Qashqai is an SUV. In summary it boiled down to a hand car wash place trying to charge us an extra £5 for a full valet, based on the fact that "it’s a 4x4."
It isn’t, of course. It’s a bit chunky, but it’s front-wheel drive and it’s a family hatchback. In fairness to the hand car wash place, all it took was a slightly befuddled look on my part for the nice people to change their minds and charge it as a normal car. I didn’t have to go into a full Alan Partridge-type rant about its car classification. Cashback. Literally.
The whole mini-saga reminded me about a conversation I had once with someone who, emboldened by free bottles of Rioja, expressed the firmly held belief that the Qashqai was a dangerous car. Dangerous, he said, because the Qashqai’s SUV pretense would have its owners venturing onto uninhabitable terrain at any given opportunity.
These kamikaze idiots would then get into all kinds of trouble because, of course, the Qashqai isn’t a mud-plugging 4x4, in any guise. They’d then presumably get stuck on a slightly damp hill and never be found, or trapped under a large tree trunk, then have to cut off their own arms to escape like James Franco in 127 hours.
A Range Rover. What Qashqai owners really want?
I'm exaggerating. He didn't say that last stuff, but he did genuinely believe that ordinary motorists would look at the Qashqai’s form and make an erroneous judgement about its capabilities. It's like suggesting that anyone who buys a Barcelona shirt believes it turns them into Lionel Messi, and they'll immediately rock up to the Camp Nou for a trial. It’s a silly theory, to say the least.
Yet, (yes, there’s a yet), what he said is the illogical conclusion of the thought process that had us almost paying a fiver more for my car wash. And it’s also the thought process that underpins the Qashqai’s wild success – that car buyers think it’s a 4x4.
Football fans buy football shirts because they want to identify with something. People buy crossovers because they want to identify with something.
I have no proof of this, and you may consider it patronising twaddle, but I’d suggest that the wild popularity of the crossover segment is because many of the people who buy them are identifying with something they’d rather have: a Range Rover. The Qashaqi is the Range Rover we can afford to wash.
Falling apart at the seals
An errant door seal demonstrates just how well built the functional Nissan Qashqai generally is.
Date: 22 May 2015 | Current mileage: 8750 | Claimed economy: 74.3mpg | Actual economy: 53.0mpg
"Your rubber’s falling off, Mark."
When your wife says that to you... well. Anyway, she was right. The driver’s door seal of the Qashqai is coming away. It’s not making any difference – the door still closes properly – but it’s happened.
What it has brought home is that fact that the Qashqai is remarkably well built. Minor parking sensor blip aside, easily rectified, the Qashqai has been good as gold – this is the first and only trim issue we’ve had.
It’s no wonder they’re everywhere. To be honest, driving around the North East in a Qashqai often feels like what it must have been like having a Ford Model T in 1920s America. There are horses and there are Qashqais. Look what happened the other day, again...
This happened recently. In the North...
In 100 years’ time, when the Geordies of the future are making a ‘The Last Century of The Toon’ exhibition in a gallery hovering over the dried up valley that was once the River Tyne, it will begin with holograms of Donna Air, a giant Sports Direct mug, and a red Nissan Qashqai.
The thing about the Qashqai is, it’s built to last – longer than Donna Air’s Geordie accent did, that’s for sure.
But the cabin design, that’s another matter. Coming to the end of our time with the car, we’ve settled into the Qashqai's interior like the living room in a rented house: it’s comfortable and familiar, but it’s also a bit bland and old fashioned. Tired, even. And there’s nothing much you can do about it.
And that probably explains my nonchalance towards my malfunctioning bit of trim. Like a slightly loose curtain rail it’s very briefly irritating, but when the house is primarily a function of necessity…well, as long as the curtains still close, right?
Vast difference
A stint with a BMW hybrid supercar got Mark all worked up about how short the Qashqai is falling in the economy stakes.
Date: 5 June 2015 | Current mileage: 9015 | Claimed economy: 74.3mpg | Actual economy: 53.5.mpg
Car journalism is a non-job of a job at the best of times, but every now and again it throws up something so spectacular as to be barely believable.
That happened last week when, for the purposes of filming one of our Ten Honest Things review videos, we procured a BMW i8. Very few cars, at any price, elicit the sort of attention that the i8 does. Encased in that wedgy bubble, you are, briefly, a rock star.
It’s the dimensions, the gullwing doors, the aerodynamic rear channels, the rarity, the incongruous silence on the move – it all adds to draw camera phones out like Gary Barlow making a surprise visit to a primary school.
The thing about the i8 is the claimed economy, which, basically, comes the result of a double-minded focus on efficiency and performance. The result: 134mpg and 4.4 seconds to 62mph, all down to a small petrol engine/electric motor hybrid setup.
A BMW i8 tries to thumb a lift
I drove the i8 around for about a week and got nowhere near that economy. Of course.
A quick internet search then revealed talk of actual owners, too, falling short of the claimed economy. It seems to me that a car like the i8 is the perfect fodder for ‘fooling’ the standard EU MPG test: it’ll happily run much of the rolling-road-at-a-steady-50mph stuff on its battery, whereas in real life, with a real person with a real desire for driving the thing, the battery drains faster than a student loan in an off licence.
So what’s the Qashqai’s excuse? I have to say, as quietly brilliant as the Qashqai has been throughout, the difference between actual average economy and claimed average economy has been alarming. It’s a problem you, our readers, are evidently having too, with the Real MPG rating for this 1.5 dCi model currently standing just 0.1mpg away from my 53.5mpg actual economy. Nissan claims it should average 74,3mpg.
I don’t necessarily blame Nissan for this, though – 53.5mpg ain’t too bad. I blame the test. I know that in reality it’s just a way of comparing all cars on a like-for-like scale (ultra modern high performance hybrids aside), but surely nobody should be led to believe that their new car will achieve 20mpg more than it actually will. Right?
Click here to read our review of the BMW i8
Final report: The Washington Weed couldn’t quite take root
The Qashqai has gone, so it's time to look back at what impact it's made over the last six months...
Date: 19 June 2015 | Current mileage: 9400 | Claimed economy: 74.3mpg | Actual economy: 53.5mpg
Six months with the Qashqai has been at once utterly predictable and genuinely memorable. We knew how good it would be; we knew how effectively it would do the day-to-day grind; we knew it would be boring.
It was all those things. What we didn’t know was quite how flawless it would be. Fuel economy aside, that is. And a gammy door seal. And a gammy parking sensor. And a chronic lack of power. Apart from that, though...
But really, it was excellent. Spacious, comfortable, and always calming to drive – assuming you stayed firm in your decision not to try to overtake anything, ever – the Qashqai was near enough the perfect family car.
And that was, in many ways, its downfall. Firstly because it’s no secret it’s that good, so everybody’s got one and secondly because it’s so clinical in its excellence.
You know those songs that you hear in department stores, and even though you have no idea who sings them, you know every note and word because you’ve heard them a hundred times before in a hundred shops because they’re so perfectly uplifting and inoffensive? The Qashqai is like that. You can’t love it. You can’t be a fan. But you can really enjoy it then never think about it again.
So it's farewell to the Nissan Qashqai
That sounds harsh, I know, but it is disconcerting and weird that you can think a car is so brilliant then be so nonchalant about it. I believe - and not to put too fine a point on this - it’s because they’re all over the place. I recently heard someone describe them as “Washington weeds”, which, if you’re not familiar with the North East, alludes to the fact that the Sunderland plant is on the outskirts of the Washington district
But I can strongly recommend a Qashqai to anyone. Well, not anyone. Basically anyone with a couple of kids and no desire to stand out. It’s not pretty and it’s not original, but it just works. Every bit of it works. From the high-riding, safe-feeling driving position, to the actual safety rating (five-star Euro NCAP), to the near perfect ergonomics, to the intuitive navigation and media system that keeps your eyes on the road more of the time and less on the screen. The Qashqai is a surprisingly dynamic drive, too.
Would I buy one? No. But that’s because I’m a big show off. I like cars that stick out. Cars with imperfections, even, because a good imperfection or two makes a car loveable. The Qashqai hasn’t really got any. It’s the perfect pop song. I want grunge.
