Nissan primera
Although cars like the Mazda6 and the Honda Accord soon stole the Nissan Primera's thunder, this has only served to make it more of a used bargain than ever. With a range of solid engines, a whole heap of design flair and a quirky and distinctive personality, the
Primera does almost everything asked of it. Keen drivers may find it a little soft-edged but this will mean that few cars will have fallen into the 'wrong' hands. Who'd have thought it would take a medium range Nissan to show that modernity needn't cost the earth and sensible needn't always equal dull?
Though the 111bhp 1.8-litre petrol unit was the most popular of the three Primera engines available in the US, it's not the most interesting. More diverting attractions lie with the 2.0-litre petrol unit – a powerplant that cranks out 139bhp and which is mated to a six-speed manual transmission or a CVT transmission with sequential manual override switching between six artificially mandated gears. A 138bhp common rail turbodiesel completes the engine line-up, offered with a six-speed manual only. Slow initial sales of this model prompted Nissan to reduce its price and up the engine output, making the entry-level 2.2Di S a far more tempting proposition. The best engine is undoubtedly the later 2.2-litre dCi with its common-rail injection configuration.Nissan's engineers claimed to have made ride and handling key priorities with the
Primera and boasted that of all the cars selected to benchmark the Primera's chassis and suspension set-up against, only the BMW 3 Series produced a better all-round result. As would be expected, they declined to mention what those vanquished by the Primera were, but many would question why Nissan would go out of their way to fix something that manifestly wasn't broken.Performance is nothing outstanding, the 2.0-litre petrol car capable of sprinting to 60mph in 10.9 seconds in CVT form. The CVT gearbox would probably benefit from driver experience, as novices can make excruciatingly jerky progress. The original diesel engine offers that sprightly acceleration with an average fuel consumption figure of nearly 49mpg but the dCi unit is smoother and offers better refinement.
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