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Earlier this week Kate and I had a chance to drive a 2009 Nissan Versa hatchback.  It’s the smallest Nissan offered here in the States.  In other parts of the world, it’s called the Tiida.  The one we drove was navy blue and was an automatic.

The automatic is so automatic that it doesn’t even have gears in the transmission!  It uses a Continously Variable Transmission to get power from the engine to the wheels.   From what I’ve read, it gives a little better fuel economy then a traditional automatic transmission, and even bests the 6-speed manual MPG version of the Versa.

Once thing you notice with this CVT is that there are no lurches (since there are no gears being changed) as the car accelerates.  It was a weird feeling, and I kept wanting to reach for a shifter of some kind to move into a different gear, but before I knew it the engine sound and RPMs told me that everything was going to be ok.  Maybe this is the future?

Other then the non-shiftyness of the car, it drove well enough.  The seat-of-my-pants accelartion test told me the car got up to speed quickly enough, and I was unable to roll it over when taking a corner.

It’s a hatchback, which I’m a big fan of, and has the usual fold-down seats in the back.  Not quite as cool as the Honda Fit fold-down-and-up-and-up-further seats we saw in Jay and Erin’s hatchback, but functional and utilitarian none the less.  The rest of the inside of the car was cleanly laid out, offering features that most people would want (ac, power windows, ample cupholderage) but nothing too fancy.   I read there’s an optional overpriced GPS system that’s available, but it wasn’t in the version we drove.

The radio was pretty fancy for stock, it had a 6-disc changer that played MP3 files burnt onto discs, as well as having an auxillary port for plugging in one’s ipod.  This should be standard on all cars!  It also has the power button as a large circular dial in the center of the radio, sort of like sister-in-law Chris’ Honda Accord.

The car had lots airbags (6), a feature that I see as more appealing now that I’m a dad.  I sort of regret not checking off the side airbags option box when I bought the Celica in 2001.  Everything I’ve read since then has said that its the safety feature that is the most effective.  Apparently just driving a nice looking car is not enough to thwart portential redlight runners.  Who knew?

Both Kate and I liked the it.  It seemed to offer lots of car goodness and usefullness in a tiny little hatchback, so we bought it. Its sitting in our driveway now.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 11th, 2008 at 10:35 pm and is filed under Automotive, Car Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.