Nissan Micra hatchback (2016-2022) review - Reliability & safety

The Nissan Micra has a fantastic reputation for reliability, although it seems likely that this high regard was forged back in the nineties when the Micra was a very simple, almost inert piece of engineering.

Although its reliable status has endured to the current day, the truth is that the most recent Micras have just as many sophisticated features as any other car and are not immune to mechanical gremlins. The bulk of the technology in the new Micra is tried and tested, though.

Nissan Micra reliability

The Nissan Micra impressed its first crop of owners, who secured it a 15th-place finish out of the top 75 models in our 2018 Driver Power survey, with an above average score for reliability. Unfortunately, we didn’t see the same high-scoring result in our 2019 survey, as it sunk down the rankings to 63rd out of 100 cars, and it failed to appear in the roster in either 2020 or 2021.

Nissan performed well as a brand, coming 11th out of 30 manufacturers in 2019 and 2020, with a reasonable 15.9% of owners reporting faults in the first year of ownership.

Safety

The Micra has received the full five-star safety rating from Euro NCAP, with an impressive 91% for adult occupant protection, second only to the 93% of the Honda Jazz in the supermini class.

Euro NCAP ratings take crash-avoidance technology very seriously, as it reduces the likelihood of the worst happening in the first place. In the Micra there’s lane-keeping assistance to steer you back in your lane should you inadvertently drift out of it, as well as autonomous emergency braking with pedestrian detection, which will bring the car safely to a stop if it detects an imminent collision with an obstruction or pedestrian. In countries where this level of kit isn't fitted as standard, Euro NCAP reduces the Micra's safety rating to four stars.