Opinion: How The Nissan Livina X-Gear Set Me Straight, Automotively Speaking

Ray Leathern finds himself all tangled up in a hum-drum, Nissan Livina X-Gear for a few days. The car leads him to start questioning the world’s automotive motives. 

I appreciate that a cheap, seven year-old MPV is not the most exciting thing you’re going to read about in the automotive world today, I apologise. But, the nature of our motoring journalism business is this: “If you drive it, you must write about.” Well, ‘must’ is stretching it a bit thin according to some. You ‘should’ write about it lets say. Despite the ethic espoused by many a glossy, lifestyle, magazine who send their fashion correspondent to test drive every single car under the sun and couldn’t be bothered to spare so much as a column inch for the experience, us blokes at SACarFan cover the lot.

We are car blokes. To our minds every car has a story to tell. Even if that story will garner very few hits and the only people who’ll be bothered to read about said car will be the department from the company that loaned it to us. Nevertheless, strap yourself in, here it goes; the Nissan Livina X-Gear Acenta+. How this particular test drive came about was thanks to my own time management incompetence. For reasons that are too laborious to explain here, I needed to travel to Jo’Burg urgently for business. This business involved driving 1 200 km around Gauteng and the North West in just three days. I asked for a BMW, but with only one day’s notice, rather obviously, there wasn’t one available. I asked Mercedes-Benz for a car, but alas, the same outcome.

I considered renting a car. I’ve done this before and once ended up with three-cylinder Nissan Micra that had done 55 000 km plus. It was so slow and awful I might as well have walked where I needed to be. It was probably the worst car I’ve ever driven, come to think of it. Not the Micra itself, but a rental one that had suffered 55 000 km plus at the hands of the sweaty, car-renting proletariat. It was sufferable at least because the three-pot Micra took me to a test drive of the majestic Ferrari FF, and it was only needed for one afternoon. This time around I need to drive the equivalent distance of Jo’burg to Laingsburg in the Western Cape. I need something just a little more competent.

An email returned with my panicked request for a car answered. “Sure thing, we have a Nissan Livina X-Gear for you”. I’m not the ungrateful type but, yes, well, after much pacing around the room, sometimes you need to bite your bottom lip and be thankful something was available at all. Now, at this juncture, I should explain that I own a 1999 Nissan Sabre 160 GXI. No, it’s not the 2.0-litre; no, it’s not an SR20; no, it’s not a VVL; no, it’s not all the things every Sentra car-bore has asked me since I de-badged mine.

I bought it the year I left varsity and I love it to this very day because it isn’t a Volkswagen Golf. Everything in my price range at that time started and ended with the Volkswagen Golf Chico. So when I saw the sporty Sabre hatch in Imola Red (the official, glorious, paint name) I had to have it.

The Nissan Livina shares the same engine and gearbox as my 1999 Sabre, fancy that 14 years on. A 1.6-litre normally aspirated unit with multi-point injection that produces 80 kW of power and 153 Nm of torque, and drives the front wheels via a simple, five-speed gearbox. I got a bit excited at the idea of sampling the same engine to see if I could pick up similar nuances between it and my own 14 year-old car. The Livina only had 300 km on the clock when it arrived; my personal car shows well over 235 000 km on the odo now, but the characters of the drivetrain are definitely similar.

There is very little torque low down in the revs with this engine, so the best way to get a flying start from standstill is to build up the revs and dump the clutch like your ex-girlfriend dumped your ass back in varsity. This sends the wheels spinning, and you slithering off the line, but crucially, it eliminates 1000 r/min where the car would normally bog down. Then you need to endure moderate progress from 1 000 r/min – 4 000 r/min. Then after a faint flat spot on the low side of 4 000 r/min, some highly strung power comes into play, and you bolt along to the redline at around 6 800 r/min. The rev counter shows red at 7 000 r/min but the tune cuts out before that at the rev-limiter.

The gear ratios are similar between my car and the Livina as well, and when I say similar I mean they are a tad off. Every time you shift up a gear, you’re sent back below the engines 4 000 r/min party line. So the Livina never keeps you on the boil. You have to push through the lack of torque for a few seconds every time to constantly maintain forward progress. This becomes wearing on the driver after he’s done 1 200 km. More modern drivetrains don’t exhibit this characteristic anymore.

They are torqueier throughout the rev range, or they have closer/crossed ratios all the way through the box. These leads to a Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde act that the Livina loves to play. If you’re in a hurry you can overcome the old tech drivetrain by driving the Livina very aggressively, often not shifting to top gear but staying in third or fourth depending on your road speed. Or, if you’re not in a hurry, you can dawdle around somewhere in the middles revs with no torque actually reaching the wheels. How you drive is entirely up to you.

Don’t think the rest of the Livina is going to sooth you during your strained driving experience. Yes, it has air conditioning and a radio, but there is no MP3 compatible CD player, so don’t even dream of there being an iPod or USB socket. The seats are flat, unsupportive and steering doesn’t adjust out so the driving position is all wrong. The windscreen wipers are absolutely useless in the way they clean the passenger side of the car twice as well as they do the driver’s side; very weird. The headlights are weak at night with the brights only doing a faintly better job. After three days driving done, I realised that in many ways, my 14 year-old, second-hand, Sabre makes a more admirable fist of being a cheap, sensible Nissan.

It’s as reliable as anything, it looks better, sounds better, handles better and is certainly cheaper than the Nissan Livina X-Gear which goes for R 201 800. Hell, my Nissan Sabre will fetch me R20 000 on the second-hand market if I’m lucky. And then a morsel of something took hold inside my head. Doubt, or hope perhaps; I couldn’t quite tell you. I realised: sure, by new car standards I haven’t enjoyed the Nissan Livina X-Gear, and for perfectly valid reasons I believe. But, anybody who climbs into my breathless, uncomfortable, hard-riding Nissan Sabre with no radio, an air conditioner that packed up years ago, and a wonky wing mirror, will probably say it is absolute crap. And frankly, I could care less what they say.

I reserve a special place in my heart for my Sabre and it comes merely from sharing time with it. It has been infinitely reliable over its lifetime, and when I do drive it, it gets me from A to B in its own, unique way. I work with it, I know how to get the most out of it, and it is genuinely a member of the family. In fact, I’d say it’s been far more reliable and fun than your typical family member. I’m certain; if bought by a private owner, the Nissan Livina X-Gear would merely through its proximity to the family; soon occupy a similar space in their family setup. It’s a car, and I know we’re in the business of being car critics, but at the end of the day, there is nothing critical to be said about a car. There is no such thing as a bad car.

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