The diminutive Nissan Micra is a car whose significance is easy to overlook in the late 20th- and early 21st-century development of the UK car market.
As the first-generation model, it helped to cement within the British consciousness the reputation for reliability, robustness, longevity and value of the volume-selling Japanese small car. And having done that, it became a British-made ‘transplant’ car itself, moving into production at Nissan’s Washington plant on Wearside for its popular second generation. This was the bug-eyed Micra supposedly beloved of pensioners, learner drivers and their driving instructors – an image that the car is still associated with to this day.
Just as the reimagined Mini came along, the noughties-era, third-generation Micra aimed to prove that the car could be desirable, too. It became something of a technical pioneer and fashionista.
But then the Micra’s fortunes changed. It was supplanted on Nissan’s Sunderland production line by the Juke; and the Micras that followed, imported as they were first from Thailand and then from France, struggled to emulate the sales of their forebears. The essence of the car’s identity was, if not lost forever, then certainly misplaced.
Time for Micra number six, then. The ‘K15’ becomes the first electric Micra, in anticipation of the Euro 7 emissions regulations that its maker expects to make the business case for combustion-engined superminis unviable.
