Best of 2014 - Galway Independent

2. Nissan Qashqai.

So how did the Nissan Qashqai deserve its award as the Association Of Professional Motoring Press’ Car Of The Year? Let me tell you how. At the APMP’s voting day, the Qashqai was lined up alongside some serious motoring royalty. BMWs, Audis, VWs, a Jaguar or two… All of which should be much more eye-catching or vote-grabbing than a relatively simple Japanese family crossover.

On top of which, the Qashqai provided to test on the day, to remind the COTY jurors of what it was like, had been around the block. It had been on the press test fleet for most of a year at that stage, driven long and hard and should by rights have felt a bit worn out.

But it didn’t. Two seconds behind the wheel was all it took to marvel once again at just what Nissan has crafted here. A tall, practical family hauler that feels tight, taut and rewarding to the keen driver. A car that even with lots of kilometres on the clock and several bums having worn divots in the NASA-developed drivers’ seat still felt, literally, as good as new.

And that’s the secret. The Qashqai has to be the ultimate multi-role urban warrior. It has to be dad’s taxi and mum’s ride to work. It has to be able to survive day after day or Furby-and-Ribena assaults from small car dismantlers (usually known as children) and yet scrub up sufficiently well to look smart in the office car park or, equally, act as wedding or birthday transport. It has to be spacious and useful, but not so big that it becomes a chore in car parks. It has to be economical and cheap to run and, crucially, reliable.

The fact that the Qashqai manages to be all of these things, yet also manages to be extremely good to drive, to have decent levels of standard equipment and to be rather chunkily handsome is just brilliant. Here is a car that should be humble, that should be stamped with the ultimate faint praise of ‘a good family car’ and yet that transcends its origins to be one of the very best cars currently on sale. All that and 99g/km of CO2. There’s not much that the Qashqai doesn’t do really, really well.