Nissan Qashqai+2 2.0 dCi Acenta

Road Test

Your Say

Nissan Qashqai+2 2.0 dCi Acenta

Test date 12 November 2008 Price as tested £21,499

For Versatile seating, solid performance, styling

AgainstCramped third row, above average emissions, bouncy ride

Barely a decade ago there were no small, affordable seven-seaters. In 1999 General Motors changed all that with the Vauxhall Zafira, squeezing a full-size MPV’s usefulness into a footprint little bigger than that of a compact family hatch. A vehicle to carry not only a family but their kids’ friends and their paraphernalia is what many need, the Zafira and its many imitators making this versatility considerably more affordable.

Those seven seats are now coming packaged in different styles, from the sporty, near full-size Ford S-Max to Vauxhall’s budget Antara 4x4 and Peugeot’s seven-seat 308 SW estate. Fiat and Honda will do you two rows of three seats, too.

The Nissan Qashqai+2 is yet another variation, providing seven seats in a cross of four-wheel drive, MPV and hatch that trades family bus aura for the appeal of an off-roader.

For the extra seats and stretched wheelbase you pay another £1450, taking the Qashqai+2 to the edge of full-size, seven-seat MPV territory, particularly in the £20,149 2.0 dCi Acenta form.

The Qashqai+2 isn’t Nissan’s first attempt at a small MPV. Between 2000 and 2006 Nissan sold the Almera Tino, an MPV based on the unloved second-generation Almera hatchback.

The problem was that the Tino was a five-seater at a time when the seven-seat Vauxhall Zafira was changing the shape of the small MPV market for good. After the arrival of the quasi-MPV Qashqai in 2007, the introduction of a seven-seater was inevitable.