The Nissan Pulsar commits the worst crime a car can commit.

I’m struggling here. I’m struggling to think of anything of interest to say about the Nissan Pulsar.

Ehhhh….oh! When you use stop/start, it tells you how many grams of CO2 you have saved. That’s about it.

The Pulsar commits the worst crime a car can, by being cripplingly boring. It’s a trend Nissan have managed to execute for decades too.

Wow, 0.02kgs

The models that preceded the Pular, the Tiida, the Almera and the Sunny, all came out of nowhere, were on sale for years and eventually were discontinued; and no one noticed.

This happens across the Nissan range too. Their large saloon, the Primera, was on sale for 18 years and was discontinued in 2008 and nobody so much as batted an eyelid.

In fact, Nissan don’t even make a saloon car for the European market anymore, focusing on crossovers and SUVs, but that’s a rant for another day.

And just like that, it was gone.

The common thread shared among these cars produced by the Japanese motoring giant however, is they are all so bland and nondescript that they are soulless. They are white goods and when a car is, for most people, the biggest purchase they will make in life outside of a house, a lack of any character will have detrimental effects on your life.

If you spend a lot of time behind the wheel, a car should be fun to drive, be a nice place to sit and be able to put a smile on your face, or at least stir some form of emotion in you.

The Pulsar does none of these things.

Zzzzzzzzz

It’s not a bad looking car, but it’s just so bland; and for a five-year-old design, it looks incredibly dated. Looks are subjective however, so I’ll move on.

The Pulsar is also incredibly dull to drive. It’s slow, doesn’t handle particularly well and all the controls have no feeling. The worst part, by a country mile however, are the brakes, which manage to be both grabby at the top of the pedal and then have no feel the more pressure you apply.

The Pulsar is also a completely uninspiring place to be. It’s not particularly uncomfortable, but it’s not cosseting either. The interior is dull and made of cheap materials and you can never escape the feeling when you’re behind the wheel, that whoever designed the Pulsar, really didn’t care about what they were doing.

No need to watch paint dry, just drive a Pulsar.

It’s also not particularly economical. Nissan claim 6.6L/100kms (43mpg) on the combined cycled. I drove a Pulsar to Galway and back recently, driving quite conservatively, using cruise-control on the motorway stretches and tickling the throttle for the parts that I wasn’t.

Aaaaaaand, I averaged 7.6L/100kms (37mpg) which isn’t terrible, but it’s far from great, especially for a car of this size with a 1.2 litre turbo engine.

Does the Pulsar have any saving graces? Well, it’s quite well specc’d, even in boggo XE trim like the one I’ve been potting around in. It has A/C, cruise-control and blutooth connectivity. It’s also safe, having a 5-star Euro Ncap rating and it will undoubtedly be incredibly reliable.

Would I recommend anyone to buy one? Well as you can tell from my vitriol above, of course I wouldn’t, especially when a Ford Focus would be much nicer to drive and a VW Golf would have a much more premium feel.

Both these alternatives are selling for similar money too; and both will hold their value better come re-sale time.

Not that any of this matters. Nissan still manage to sell their cars by the thousands, just look at the classifieds to see how many ancient Almeras are for sale to see testament of that.

I think people buy Nissans because they’re a safe bet, and the dealership is probably near their house.

I’ll just never understand settling for mediocre, when the alternatives are so much better and more characterful.

It’s also unacceptable behaviour from Nissan, who produce some incredibly interesting vehicles like the GT-R and the Leaf.

You should be able to form a bond with a car, get a sense of its personality, with the Pulsar, this is an impossibility. For shame Nissan, guilty as charged.