To the front seats! Which are very
comfortable. I have a bad back (which I hardly dare mention as it’s been caused
by driving supercars) but after a few hours in the Qashqai I didn’t have the
usual aches and pains. Nissan says they were inspired by Nasa, so tell your
gullible progeny you’re sitting in the same seat used by astronauts. As for the
rest of the interior, all the switches and dials require less effort to use, which
somewhat counteracts the overall hike in quality. An electronic handbrake frees
up useful extra stowage space, but the satnav screen has been dropped out of
your line of sight and in doing so a little of the Qashqai’s individual style
has been lost too – gone is the tightly stacked centre console and circular air
vents, replaced by a more generic dashboard that’ll be shared with a
forthcoming Focus-rivaling hatchback.
Crossover
roofline means that the rear cabin offers decent headroom and fine legroom
The driving experience is a little
inconsequential in this context, especially as Nissan bosses openly admit the
Qashqai is more akin to the safe and secure Golf than the fine-handling Focus.
Still, there’s some clever tech to improve the driving experience:
double-piston shock absorbers are designed to deal with both big but
low-frequency bumps on rougher roads and smaller higher-frequency imperfections
on smoother surfaces; and Active Ride Control subtly applies the brakes to
reduce body pitch and movement over expansion joints or, more likely, when
you’re charging over urban speed bumps during the school run, screaming at your
darlings to STOP… FIGHTING… WITH… EACH… OTHER!
There's
plentiful oddment storage space in the centre console
Both bits of tech sound impressive, until
you realise they’re there to counteract the Qashqai’s backwards step to torsion
beam rear suspension. The first Qashqai had an independent multi-link rear, but
the new ‘advanced twist beam design’ is lighter (thus helping to reduce CO2
emissions) and, importantly, cheaper too. As a rule, front-wheel drive Qashqais
get the beam, while four-wheel drive necessitates the rarer All-Mode 4x4-I
models retain a multi-link set-up. Interestingly, some markets, such as ours
(South Africa) and Germany will get an option to upgrade their
front-wheel-drive models to multi-link, but more important for us is knowing
there’s some sophisticated suspension around for the circa-186kW Nismo variant.
Still, our twist beam-suspended, two-wheel-drive Qashqai test cars rode
decently, even on their 19-inch alloys (it’s 16-inch steel wheels for the
bottom-rung Visia spec, 19s for the top-spec Tekna, and 17s for everything
else) and over big bumps the Active Ride Control tech ties down the back end
pretty promptly. More impressive is the step forward in refinement: the door
mirrors remain huge and a source of too much wind noise at speed, but the 1.5
and 1.6-litre dCi diesel engines we tried were much better isolated from the
cabin, plus road noise is down too, and overall the Mk2 Qashqai is much quieter
than the Mk1.
The
Nissan's load bay is of a decent size and access is easy
The 1.5 dCi – only available as a
front-wheel drive manual – is not quick, but it’s not dirty either emitting
just 99g/km CO2. Go for the 1.6 dCi and you get another 15kW and 60Nm, plus the
options of a CVT gearbox and four-wheel drive (but not the two together). The
FWD automatic is usefully quicker than the 1.5 dCi, and the CVT transmission is
surprisingly adept, maintaining low revs if you’re ambling, working up through
seven stepped ‘gears’ if you’re accelerating hard, and only occasionally
getting caught out and incessantly holding high rpms.
Parcel
shelf can be used as a divider or stowed neatly when not needed
Other snippets worthy of a mention include
Normal and Sport weightings for the electric steering which near as dammit make
no difference at all, an active Trace Control system that gently applies the
brakes to reduce under steer when you’ve overcooked a roundabout, lots of fancy
safety systems to reduce low-speed bumps and collisions, and a self-cleaning
reversing camera so you don’t have to rub it with a wet thumb like you’re
wiping a grubby child’s cheeks.
An illicit rifle through your wife’s copy
of Fifty Shades of Grey will set your heart racing faster, but Nissan is onto a
winning recipe once again.
