Nissan’s Almera has had a revamp that includes revised suspension settings, a neater, more practical interior and more aggressive exterior styling. There are new bumpers front and rear, new headlamp clusters and a sexy new honeycomb mesh grille that does wonders towards changing the car’s image without altering its profile. Finishing off the revised aesthetics are new flat-spoke 15-inch alloy wheels for flagship versions, while other models have new wheeltrims on 14-inch wheels.
The Almera now has slighter firmer damper settings and marginally stiffer spring ratings, which the press release says “have been executed in such a way as to only come into play at the upper edge of the dynamic envelope.” We think they’re trying to say that you’ll only notice the changes when you drive the car very hard.
As before, the Almera is powered by a choice of fuel-injected 1,6- or 1,8-litre multivalve powerplants rated at 81 kW/138 Nm and 88 kW/161 Nm respectively. The range now consists of five models, thanks to the arrival of a new entry-level 1,6 Comfort designed to appeal chiefly to the fleet operator or the budget-conscious private buyer. This joins the 1.6 Luxury (manual and automatic), 1.6 Elegance and 1.8 Elegance derivatives.
The Nissan Almeras have always offered bullet-proof engineering at very good prices in — we think — rather bland packaging. The new model is a huge improvement. For many of the existing Nissan fans out there it’ll be “Al weer ‘n Almera”. For the rest, it’s well worth a closer look.