Well, hello there yourself, little guy! As with any car show, so too do the parking lots at the junkyard often present the most interesting finds. Once again, here’s a visitor from the Mexican state of Chihuahua to go along with the others I’ve found previously that we don’t get north of the border. Except, in this case, a look beyond our own northern border to Canada would find this Nissan sold there as well, just badged as the Micra, as it seems to be named in the 160 or so markets it’s sold in except for Mexico and Japan where it’s the March.
Presumably we didn’t get it due to Nissan figuring we’d be fine with the little Versa Note (the hatchback one) that was itself discontinued a few years back due to lack of demand. The March/Micra likely wouldn’t have sold particularly well since we as a society in general don’t seem to like/appreciate/understand smaller cars like this.
However, in Mexico they do. Well, did, since production was supposedly discontinued there last year. This generation March (K13) was introduced in 2011, facelifted in 2014, and then produced until 2019 in Nissan’s Aguascalientes factory that produces various different Nissans, an Infiniti or two, and even dabbles in Mercedes products. However, Europe and South Africa at least got a new Micra for 2016 that looks much more swoopy in the current Nissan idiom as opposed to the rounded look as seen here and is built in France.
Beyond it being at least a 2014 due to the revisions as of then (most obviously seen in the “V” grille), this could be anything from a ’14 to a ’19, the 14″ wheels with hubcaps (these are painted black, stock they are silver-gray plastic) seem to denote it as a “Sense” trim level, the second from the bottom.
Still, even as a lower-end version, it manages to look far from stripped, with body color mirrors and door handles, bright red paint, a jaunty antenna on the roof along with a very funky boomerang-looking indentation up there as well.
If I had the audacity (or the cojones) to somehow pop the hood, you’d see that these are powered by a 1.6 liter 4-cylinder producing 106hp and 105lb-ft of torque, and mostly seemed to come equipped with a 5-speed manual transmission which seems like the best way to have some fun with something this small. How small? Eh, it looked a bit smaller than the Versa Note, maybe a hair larger than the Fiat 500 but with four doors. Tangling with an F-250 likely wouldn’t end well, but it seems zippy enough to maneuver out of a danger zone as long as attention is paid.
Since it would seem to be particularly bad form to be too interested in someone’s ride in a junkyard parking lot, this poorly composed and hastily taken shot of the interior will have to suffice, the sun didn’t help matters any. Still, the seats look decently upholstered, and the dash seems usable enough, it has airbags, no worse than any other little car on sale here over the last few years. Of course most of those have been discontinued here as well recently.
Going to the AutoTokio Chihuahua website seems to show that the March is still available as a new car and in fact there is a PDF of the 2020 Nissan March brochure available, so maybe they didn’t stop production after all. Or they built a bunch for inventory. In any case, the brochure lists “10 reasons to consider Nissan March” so here’s the list (I speak enough Spanish to kind of figure it out) – 1. It has ABS, Electronic Brake Distribution (Emergency Braking?), and Brake Assist, 2. Backup camera, 3. 5speed manual or 4speed auto, 4. Halogen lights, 5. Intelligent Key (or keyless entry?) 6. Alarm (I think, it talks about anti-oppression), 7. Touchscreen, 8. 4-cylinder engine that gets up to 20km/L on the highway, 9. AndroidAuto and AppleCarplay, and 10. 15″ aluminum wheels.
Presumably some of that is standard and some is optional, but there are still four trim levels, and prices seem to start around 165,000 pesos which is around US$8,250. A 2020 model that more or less seems like the one seen here is priced around 10% more so just over US$9,000. I know prices don’t transfer directly like that to different markets but it would seem that there’d be some buyers up here that would snap these up, in no way does this look like a total penalty box. It’s just small, which of course to most Americans seems to be enough of a penalty in and of itself.
Related Reading From South Of The Border:
We have them here as March and Micra all generations, the name depends on whether they arrived new via Nissan or used via an auction house they dont stand out amongst the ocean of other small Japanese and other countries small cars on the road but are possibly better than some others there must be some form of anti theft device in them because the most commonly stolen cars arent Micra/March but Mazda Demios/Mazda2 because they have zero to prevent theft just get in and go like a ride share scheme without the payment plan, its a fault that shows up in lots of JDM cars anything not required by the domestic market is left out and their low vehicle theft rate means ToyoKogyo can save money on each one by leaving out the key chip recognition equipment,Suzuki leave out most of the airbags, others something else, you pays your money and takes your chance.
Three years ago, I stepped foot outside of the United States for my first (and only) time – we took a day-trip to Ottawa while we were on a camping vacation in upstate New York. Aside from seeing the sights of Ottawa (which I enjoyed), I desperately hoped to find a non-US market car to complement my exciting, international trip.
Fortunately, I did find such a car, which was a Nissan Micra. I took a few pictures of it, but the only one I can find right now is this one… I thought the three two-box cars parked together and in increasing size made for an interesting photo.
This particular one seems to be one of the higher trim levels, but I can only speculate. After taking this picture, I haven’t thought of the Micra/March since. I’m glad to read about this Mexican find, and see the more detailed pictures here. Overall, I like this car’s styling, especially the sweeping C-pillar/rear window glass, which seem to add a distinctive element in the small-car class.
This particular generation was less distinctive than the one before, almost seeming like an amalgum of features from the second (K11) and third (K12) ones. Replaced over here with a much more jaggy and lower stanced model related to the Renault Clio.
Actually saw a 1st generation Micra in red last week. Even the youngest of those are approaching 30 years old.
I note that in Mexico they gave the economy figures in Km per litre. Here in the UK manufacturers still give miles per (Imperial) gallon though they stiopped selling fuel in gallons ages ago. I guess it will last as long as the road signs still show distances in miles only.
Curious, that. In Australia we’ve been metric since 1974 IIRC, after metricating our money in 1966, and went all the way in one go, altered all the road signs and everything. It caused massive angst among the older populace, but that’s long behind us now. We brought up our children (b. 1987 and 1989) to know and understand both systems, as only metric was taught in school by then, but we knew they’d be finding historic remnants of the old system all life long, no matter where life took them. But I still have to convert l/100km to mpg to make any sense of it.
Come to think of it, km/l seems a lot more logical than how many litres to travel an arbitrary distance. I know we’re not the only country to do it that way, but to me it seems counter-intuitive.
On FB the other week someone had found an old milepost, and wondered what the numbers on it meant because they didn’t seem to refer to a distance to anywhere. Us oldies soon set them straight!
Thanks, Jim, for the lowdown on a top-selling model in Mexico.
The CC effect is alive and well. I just saw a March yesterday while driving on the local toll road. It was dwarfed by most of the other cars and trucks on the road, which is why it caught my attention in the first place. This March had plates from the Mexican state of Nuevo León, but also had a transponder from the local tollway authority to pay tolls electronically, so the owner must be a student attending a local university or someone who makes regular trips to Texas.
Hola, bonjour and eh hoser, Micra!
Last year, an Uber driver scurried me from Guanajuato to Leon in one of these. The March was a satisfactory means of transport. The interior was light and airy and the seats were comfortable. Resplendent in electric blue, it certainly didn’t look like a cheap car, even though it was. I don’t have any comparable experience with the moribund Versa Note, but thought the styling of the March to be superior, both inside and out.
My mom, sister, and I took a trip to Europe about 15 years ago. We rented a Nissan Micra with the 1.2 liter engine and 5 speed manual. It was brand new and had 4 KM on the clock when we picked it up. Between the 3 of us and our luggage, I had to have it in 3rd gear to keep up with highway traffic going up hill. I didn’t realize for several minutes that I was redlining the poor thing. Then, at the end of the trip, we were stuck in a major traffic jam on the way to the airport. Once traffic cleared, and my mom had fallen asleep in the passenger seat, I had that little car at speeds Nissan wouldn’t know it could do. That poor car probably didn’t last very long due to my immature treatment during the break in period. I was young and dumb.
Young and dumb. The stories we could all tell! Or not so dumb, just focussed elsewhere.
Like an English friend with several doctorates to his name who bought an old Valiant when he arrived, and wondered why all the traffic on the highway was going so slow – he was only cruising at 90. We gently took him aside and explained the 90 he’d been was doing by his speedo was not the 90 the highway patrol would have had in mind if they’d seen him!
I had to do a quick search to see if the 1.6 liter engine in this and the Versa was an update of the GA16DE I had in my ’96 Sentra. It’s apparently not, and a bit of Googling revealed that its reliability and durability is not up to that one either. I’ve heard so many (valid, it seems) complaints about the Versa from people who’ve owned or rented them and I just assumed they were due to the CVTs, which are widely known to be crap.
The 95-99 Sentra was just about marginal as a car in general, but the engine, at least when mated to the 5 speed, was dead reliable. Best car I ever owned, despite the fact that I hated looking at it and wasn’t exactly enthralled by driving it. 220,000 miles in 5.5 years with nothing but maintenance, and it still ran like a top when I watched it drive away. (More like a Singer sewing machine….but whatever.
I’ve been optimistically hopeful that Nissan was still producing something akin to that product that would perform as well over the long haul, but it doesn’t seem so.
The Micra has recently been discontinued in Canada. It’s headline-grabbing identity was always its price – C$9999 (US$7500 +/-). Plus destination of course, and anything conceivable as optional equipment. I think the base version had wind up windows…
I drove one once. Not the base version, of which very few were sold, and it was surprisingly solid and not at all unpleasant around town. It compared very favourably to the Chevrolet Spark, which I’ve also rented for city errands.
I remember when these facelifted models went on sale in Canada around 2014 or so and being rather disappointed that it wasn’t offered in the US. I thought it looked better than the rest of Nissan’s lineup at the time, capturing that right cute and cheerful look. It came with a proper transmission rather than the cvt rubbish. And It was hugely affordable and supposedly fun to drive. They even had their own racing series.
The March is still sold in Canada as the Micra. It’s one of our two sub $10,000 cars available in our market. In all the years such strippers have been available, I have seen like three of them on the street. Apparently they are even too stripped out for frugal Quebecois, the primary market for cheap little hatchbacks.
https://www.nissan.ca/vehicles/discontinued/micra.html
If you look at the link that you’ve provided, it says “Discontinued”. I think you’ve captured your handle properly.
The Micra is not in production but when I drove past Southside Nissan yesterday, there were plenty of specimens for sale.
The current one has all the current Nissan styling cues you might expect. All of them.
We hired one of these in France about 5 years for a summer holiday, and I intended to write it up for your amusement and delectation.
However, when the most exciting thing about a car is a styling crease in the roof you need 3 days to notice and a working tyre pressure monitor, that gets harder.
IIRC, a 1.2 litre 3 cylinder, and built in England. I think it was white. Or maybe blue.
Good grief man, you’d think after 5 years of summer holiday in it you’d remember the colour of the damn thing.
These are sold as the Nissan MICRA in Australia. Don’t know why.
Small car, name had to be big n’ shouty to avoid road trains running over them, perhaps?
We got them in Oz until 2016. They were cheap, so there’s that. Most had three cylinders (so as regards cylinder 4, there isn’t that). Surely more of a grudge purchase than a considered choice: new, warrantied, and wheeled about covers the criteria. The driving experience is, alas, a lot less exciting than that description suggests.
Very likely to be your hire car in touristy areas, they seem to have sold in some numbers and are still common, but then again, so is herpes.