Farewell to the Micra we know so well as new EV supermini to take over

Published on 29 January, 2022

Overview

Most people of a certain vintage – and we won’t go into that, if you don’t mind – remember the Nissan Micra at some stage of their motoring lives.

I had one briefly way back and, while it was far from perfect, it was so easy on fuel it would put some of today’s superminis to shame. That low-fuel consumption was due to a specially designed engine, high gearing and a particularly low weight of only 675kg.

The Micra was first introduced in Japan in 1982 (1983 in Europe), so it’s 40 years old and had been originally designed for Fiat.

Now we’re told it is to be overtaken by an all-new compact electric vehicle for European markets.

Nothing stands still in the motor industry, but I have never seen anything like the pace of change we’re currently experiencing in the shift to EV.

An example is the Volkswagen group, which has completed the transformation of its Zwickau plant from being a producer of internal combustion engines to a dedicated electric vehicle production plant – a world first.

Anyway, the new Nissan will be built at the Renault ElectriCity centre in France and will succeed the Micra as the entry-level vehicle in the Nissan line-up.

I’ll be sad to see the little Micra go. Only the other day I remarked on how well it looked, especially compared with its dowdier forerunners (that didn’t stop people buying them in their droves).

The new car is designed by Nissan and engineered and manufactured by Renault on the Alliance’s CMF B-EV platform.

This platform lets the Alliance companies keep individual styling but saves on the expense of having to build separate underpinnings.