Miscellany: 2019 Nissan Versa review - Uber Alles

When acrid white smoke started billowing out of my BMW 328i's hood and A/C vents, it didn't take much searching to figure out exactly what was happening - a valve cover gasket leak. Thankfully, I still had 800 miles left on my CarMax extended warranty, so I took that sucker into the shop and got a rental car to ferry me around for 3 days.

CarMax and Enterprise set me up with what was once the cheapest new car in America - the 2019 Nissan Versa. The Versa's low cost (under $13,000 for a very lightly used example) and high fuel economy (31 city/39 highway) have made it a darling of Uber drivers across the country. But is it anything more than a nondescript econobox?

Well, not really, at least performance-wise. While the zero-to-sixty time is okay for this class (I measured it at about 9.8 seconds), the 1.6L 4-pot barely breaks 100 in both horsepower and pound-feet of torque, meaning that the car struggles in the 60-to-80 mph range. Overall handling isn't much better; the Versa wallows in corners and gets unstable in highways crosswinds or uneven pavement.

No, the virtues of this car are all practical. The interior may be limned in cheesy hard plastic, but the gauges and controls are all sensibly placed and easy to use. Visibility is good because the vehicle is taller than average and the seating position is high, almost like a mini-crossover. The infotainment system read my iPhone easily and controlled well via a touchscreen, which was necessary to drown out the chainsaw buzz of the engine at high speed.

Practicality continues into the rear, with a surprisingly capacious back seat. The upholstery isn't the most comfortable material, but who cares? You're going to be using a seat cover anyway if you're ferrying passengers for hire, lest you want to be cleaning vomit and mud out of seat crevices every week. The same goes for the trunk: while it makes the car's rear overhang aesthetically bulbous, 15 cubic feet of space means you can carry a full load of luggage, even with a spare tire underneath.

At the end of my time with the Nissan Versa, I found myself respecting what the car stood for - inexpensive, reliable (the Bimmer was in the shop, after all), and usable transportation. If you're a rideshare driver, you could do a whole lot worse.