2009 Nissan Versa Review

Cars.com experts walk you through the 2009 Nissan Versa and its important new features.

Cars.com auto review Hi, I'm Mike Hanley with Cars.com and I'm here with the 2009 Nissan Versa. It’s Nissan small affordable hatchback and it offers quite a bit of interior room considering its small exterior foot print so let’s take a look at this practical model. The front of the Versa’s cabin is pretty roomy. It’s got these nice comfortable seats and these seats include a height adjustment which is something you don’t see in all cars in this class. Material quality overall is pretty decent also for the class. Now some of the controls like these air-conditioning knobs are little low grade, overall though it’s not bad. One thing I’d like to see that’s not here is upholstering steering wheel and that’s also kind of a rarity in this class. But it will alleviate one of the issues I found when driving it today. I’d have a seat too close of the pedals. They have a nice comfortable arm length to the wheel or too far away and I have to be reaching forward. So probably one thing it’d be nice to see in this model. The backseat of the Versa surprisingly big, I'm just over six feet tall and you can see here I have good legroom and I set the front seat or I'll be driving at. So that means you can have taller dogs in front and back and still be comfortable. There's a center arm rest here which is a nice feature and the back rest is set at a nice angle. It doesn’t recline forward and backward like some small hatchback seats do but the position of it makes for good comfort overall. Versa’s carburetor behind the backseats is 17.8 cubic feet. You can expand that, adjust over 50 cubic feet by folding down the backseats. You can see how they go down like that. For a couple issues though with this cargo arrangement, first of all check out how this rear opening just cuts in right here and that could make it harder to load in some wider items and also look at the back seat when it is done. It’s now like completely flat extended floor like some of the competitors’ offer just like they also make it difficult to load a long item and push it all the way in. The Versa appeal is on a lot upfront. It offers a comfortable driving experience, good gas mileage of up to 27 miles per gallon in the city and 33 on the highway and plenty of room inside for passengers. What makes it even more attractive though is it starting price of about $13,000.00. For more car-related news go to Cars.com or our blog, Kicking Tires.net.