It was a few weeks ago now, but here’s Sonia and my new 2010 Nissan Versa SL with an Xtronic CVT transmission.
The Darwin Fish and FSM are from EvolveFish.
We ended up getting the car for just under $20,000 with taxes, undercoating and a dealer VIP program (free oil changes as long as we own the car) after shopping around to almost all of the Nissan and Honda (we were also considering the Fit DX-A) dealers in the lower mainland. Morrey Nissan in Burnaby provided us the lowest price, so we went with them.
We’re quite happy with this car. It’s got power windows, locks, and mirrors, a nice interior, lots of leg room in the front and back, and a surprising amount of cargo space (one of our key reasons for considering the Fit and Versa). It also has electronic stability control (which will be mandatory on all new cars in Canada in another year or two), a block heater and a spare tire (none of which were offered on the Fit).
We’ve taken it out on a few drives already, once to see a drive-in triple feature in Langley and then last weekend to Yoho National Park for a camping trip. The car has enough pep in its 1.8 L engine to keep up with most other vehicles on the Coquiholla highway, and after tracking the fuel economy we got as good as 6.6 L / 100 km on the highway (or 43 mpg). In the city we’re getting between 7 and 9 L / 100 km. The specs from Nissan of course say that we could ideally achieve 5.8 L/100km on the highway and 7.3 in the city.
We’re hoping to get out for a few more hikes and camping trips this summer and also to maybe take a week long trip down the Oregon coast to California at the end of August. At the very least, it’s been very helpful with errands here and there, and perhaps saved the day at the Lawrence Krauss debate by bringing him the donuts that he was craving.
Our one complaint is that rather than be equipped with a real horn that allows one to express true highway rage-frustration, we are given a horn that is reminiscent of a 6-year old girl’s bicycle horn with a very sad and pathetic “meep.”
In that vein, we may end up calling this little car Meeper or maybe Beaker. Of course my original idea was Defiant, but I’m not sure if this car is quite the little battleship as the one of the DS9 namesake.
