A nice ride that gets the job done

The compact Nissan Qashqai (nee Dualis) is a decent machine among today’s welter of decent machines.

There may not be a tonne of sport or utility in a five-door Qashqai, yet this Nissan is more often touted as an SUV.

Really, it’s more the urban crossover, blurring lines between old-style hatchbacks and higher-riding SUVs.

It arrives with almost ubiquitous new-age styling: sharp body creases and squinty, angry grasshopper headlights which, in particular body colour combinations, can be quite striking.

That 4.4 metre-long body is helped by excellent surround-camera work when parking and ideal for city streets and car parks.

The Nissan presents with a  pleasant, comfortable and well-sorted interior with a long list of  convenience and safety features on board – from a tyre-pressure monitor to satellite navigation.

The turbocharged 1.3 litre engine and its 110kW, working with a Constantly Variable Transmission (CVT), is quiet and responsive: quite handy around town.

Nissan reckons it should return just over six litres per 100 kilometres, while in the real world it’s probably closer to eight litres (there’s now an e-Power version with small on-board generator to charge a battery for all-electric drive but, at $52,900, that’s an expensive and premium Qashqai).

Ride, steering and road manners are good and the CVT most civilised, compared with whining CVTs of 10 years back.

So, there’s precious little to complain about (unless you’re shoved into the tightish back seat) for a car costing from around $34,000 before on-road costs.

This is a competent machine among a herd of competent machines, and fuss-free to suit any number of folk.

Yet, it stirs a hankering here for old-school motoring and days with major differences between makes and models – back when few cars had power windows, when only expensive machines had air-conditioning and when most four-wheel drivers needed kidney belts.

Back then, some vehicles would understeer: turn corners after the road straightened; some would oversteer: turn the corner before the bend arrived.

There were so-called sports machines that couldn’t drive out of sight on a dark night, four-speed automatics were a luxury, and some manual gearboxes would give a bloke a hernia.

These days, differences are more nuanced, and car-buying decisions are as much about aesthetics and finance and maybe warranties.

There are any number of good  cars out there as attested to by  Nissan’s Qashqai.

It’s well worth consideration in this corner of a busy market.