Nissan has come out with an interesting variant of the Micra (locally called March) hatch in Brazil sporting a 1.6-liter engine that fires using petrol and ethanol. The March variant is equipped with a 16-valve flex-fuel engine that develops 111PS/151 Nm. Its top speed stands at a lofty 191 kph.
Nissan may not introduce a sporty version of the Micra for the Indian customer as the Renault Pulse looks very close to one. Nissan recently updated the car with a powerful horn, rear head rests and pure drive badges. Skyrocketing petrol prices thwarted the appeal of the fuel-sipping 1.2 petrol, and we’ll be surprised if the Japanese decision makers consider the more powerful 1.5 petrol from the Sunny.
Nissan will reveal details about the Sunny’s Indian name and specifications in the next two weeks, Financial Chronicle’s online edition reports. A top official from Nissan has been quoted talking about the revealing.
If you thought there’s going to be superchargers and direct injection under the hood, you are not going to like the rest of this post.
IndianAutosBlog has learnt that a 1.6-liter petrol engine and a 1.5-liter diesel engine will provide motive force. The latter is borrowed from the Micra hatch and tuned to return better performance. The Sunny is the second car to ride of the V-Platform. A MPV is expected to follow, but a launch in India is unlikely. Instead, India will get the NV200 van next year.
The sedan will be manufactured at the Oragadam facility of the Renault-Nissan combine. Meanwhile an IndianAutosBlog.com reader who wished to stay undercover sent us two snaps of the diesel V-Platform sedan (we’re confused what to call it) testing outside Chennai. The car caught on test had black interiors and had basic equipment. The top-end variant will have beige interiors and features like alloy wheels, automatic climate control, auto folding mirrors, etc.
Sunny and Versa have been ruled out for India as the former was a 50cc scooter from Bajaj that exited production, while the latter was a rare flop from the house of Maruti Suzuki.
Will the Nissan sedan be called Almera? Will it be named March? What do you think Nissan India will call this car?
The Nissan Micra is a sales success for the Japanese company which was questioned for shifting the production site and making markedly different design changed during its introduction last year in March as the Nissan March in Thailand.
Nissan has been making the Micra/March ever since 1982 in convertible, sedan and hatchback forms. The latest model was introduced in India last year with a 3cyl petrol engine followed by the highly fuel efficient, no-turbo lag 1.5-liter diesel variant which we felt was the best city hatch in India for someone starting a family.
Nissan announced that by the end of May 2011, it had made 6 million units of the fourth generation Micra (codenamed K13) globally. The Micra is produced in India, Thailand, China and Mexico and sold in over 70 countries.
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Nissan has managed to sell 54000 Micras all across the globe. These include bookings from Thailand, India and even hometown Japan.
The Micra was first launched in Thailand earlier this year & made its debut in India a couple of months back. It is slated for its European launch in November (The Micra is sold as the March in certain other countries) In Thailand alone the company has received 26,000 bookings for the car.
In India too the car had a fantastic 1st month. In the month of August the car crossed sales of 1,000 units despite Nissan’s thin dealership network.
Nissan hopes to achieve a sales mark of a million units by 2013 from all the 3 models ( Micra Hatch, Sedan & MPV) based on the V platform.
The Micra has hit the jackpot and Nissan has reacted well. It added a second shift to their Chennai plant as exports are to begin shortly. Buoyed by this success, Akihisa Suzuki, Global Chief Marketing Manager of Nissan Motors said, “We want to reach one million units by 2013, for the three models based on the new platform V.”
Despite of the controversial styling, the Nissan Micra is a good buy especially for the goodies that it packs in. Features like keyless entry, start stop button which is available on Micra, generally start at D segment sedans like the Chevrolet Cruze. Even the basic model is loaded with useful features, but customers in India have preferred the top-end model that comes with the aforementioned features. It has also received the ‘Most Environmental friendly Car of the Year’ award in Thailand. This combination of value, features, and responsibility makes the Micra sell like hot cakes.
The Nissan Micra which was recently introduced in India, has met with mammoth success in its home market. More than 10,000 Japanese customers have placed their orders within two weeks of the vehicle’s launch.
Nissan was only expecting 4,000 orders in the initial months, but within two weeks, two and a half times that number has been registered, it says.
Nissan has also released details on what Japanese customers like – The most appealing color is Brilliant Silver (25 percent), and the black interiors is the most preferred.
In Japan, the Nissan Micra comes with the same 1.2-liter 3-cylinder HR12DE engine with Start-Stop technology. The vehicle is equipped with ABS, EBD, SRS airbags and SRS side airbags, load limiter with pretensioners for the seatbelts, linked front wipers, dawn sensors and multi-reflector halogen headlights with manual control.
The styling of the last generation Nissan Micra can best be described as ‘girly’. There is no offense in a car looking feminist, but when a manufacturer is aiming to sell the car in 160 markets worldwide, it can’t offer a car that only the fairer sex would like to be seen in one. That is the main reason why Nissan has made the fourth generation Micra’s styling appeal to both the sexes.
At first glance, the front of the car is bold. Not the sharp, edgy kind of bold, but a unique, subtle, soft refreshing kind of bold.
The soft curves on the front give a very pleasing look to the Micra. The narrow ‘grille’ of the car somewhat gives it its cheerful character. Only the top end variant XV gets a horizontal chrome lining cutting across the grille. The Nissan badge sits proudly above the grille.
The side profile of the new Micra looks very similar to the old gen Micra except for the rear end of the roof, which doesn’t slope down but extends a bit and rises gently and then falls, which results in an integrated rear spoiler. The 14 inch wheels fill the wheel wells sufficiently and there wouldn’t be a necessity to beef up the tyres to make the car look better.
The roof of the car features a unique boomerang styled ridge which is more of a technical addition than a cosmetic feature. This boomerang shaped ridge increases the stiffness of the roof and this makes the Micra’s roof lighter and stiffer.
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We assume we’re hours away from seeing the new Nissan Micra at the Oragadam facility in Chennai. While high anticipation prevails in camp IAB, another part of the world is getting ready for the launch of this small car. We’re talking about Thailand which will get the Micra (they call it March) before anyone else in the world.
Here are a few images from the press kits issues by Nissan in Thailand.
Nissan has begun going public about its upcoming March/Micra compact car
In Thailand, Nissan is gone up a gear for promoting the new Micra/March compact car. Ads featuring the car is becoming a regular sight in Thailand with the “Coming soon” text in the local language.
Seen here is a wall poster with what possibly could be car’s brand ambassador. Would Nissan do a Hyundai by roping in someone from Bollywood to promote the car?
Nissan’s all-new Micra will be manufactured at the company’s Chennai facility. In the first phase, a 3-cylinder petrol engine displacing 1.2 liters is expected. It will be mated to a 5-speed manual transmission. Diesel variants are expected in the future.
Nissan has not revealed the dimensions of the Micra, but we expect it to be in the size range of the Hyundai i10. Production will start in May and the car will be in Indian dealer showrooms by the end of July.
