The K10 generation of Micra is somewhat interesting in that it supplied the bones for the Japanese retro-future hits, the Nissan Pao and Nissan Figaro. This Micra you see on a cold January evening in Berlin, however, does not have any outstanding design trademarks.
It has little flair or much design to stand out from the crowd. It’s not an enthusiast icon, nor is it a historically significant game-changer in the marketplace. It’s just a plain little hatchback, a regular inhabitant of anonymous European urban landscapes.
Perhaps that’s what kept me from walking past it on my nightly trip back from the Green Party archive to my nearby hostel. The cold was reason enough to keep me from stopping to get out my camera, but I couldn’t help but try to snap something in focus under the streetlamps and fading blue sky. I just wanted a little keepsake of my feeling of normalcy in a foreign country, where alien Nissans are unnoticeably common.
It might just be a reliable old car, but my drowsy eyes couldn’t help but fall for it on that overworked, overtired night.
Neat little cars, these K10 Micras. And they were sold here in Canada, too, the only place in North America that got them. Which means the big bumpers and special headlights we had are now quite scarce parts, I’d imagine…