The Nissan Figaro Is a Crazy Retro Japanese Tiny Convertible

this is a 1991 Nissan figuro and it's weird and quirky to say the least the figuro is a tiny car much smaller than a Mini Cooper but it's also a retro car meant to evoke the 1950s back when cars were huge that's just the beginning of the weirdness with the figuro and today I'm going to review this car and show you all of its many quirks and features [Applause] [Music] before I get started big news this figuro is currently for sale and it's being auctioned live on cars and bids this is a ridiculous car but very cool with a convertible top and a design that's sure to turn heads everywhere you go and it can be yours on cars and bids so once you finish watching this video click the link in the description below to visit the live auction for this crazy Nissan figuro where you can bid on it and buy it only on cars and bids all right time for the ccs and features of the Nissan figuro and I'm going to start with an explanation of exactly what this thing is and how it came to be how did a Japanese car company create a 1950s retro car in the 1980s complete with a convertible top and chrome Tru trim so i' take you back to the mid to late 80s Nissan has a subcompact car called the march in some markets it's called the micro but in Japan it was called the March and it wasn't selling all that well so Nissan did an internal competition among their designers to create a slightly different rebodied version of the March that would add interest and make it sell that car was called the B1 that's be like to be or not to be-1 and it was a March but with a different body that looked retro and cool and funky and hip and people loved it suddenly this some compact car that wasn't selling all that well there was this new special edition version out the B1 and there were lines out the door trying to get one and so Nissan had an idea let's make more weird retro cars based on the Nissan March and that's exactly what Nissan did over the next few years they came out with three more weird little retro inspired cars based on the March after the B1 and they all came out of Nissan's Pike Factory which is a bit of a misnomer because there was no actual special factory set up to make these cars they were built in conjunction with a Nissan partner instead the term was applied to just make them seem cool and special and distinctive and create some mystery the pike Factory cars there was the Nissan pow which was a hatchback just like the Nissan March but a weird one with a totally crazy look that was distinctive and special and exciting there was also the Nissan s cargo I owned one of these cars it looked like a snail and it was called the sargo because it was a cargo vehicle and S Cargo in French means snail was very clever and very wonderful and I loved mine but by far the most desirable most exciting and best known Pike Factory car is this one the figuro which came out last after all the others now the figuro was the only convertible Pike Factory car and it was probably the most exaggerated of the Retro designs it was very special and it was a huge hit when it was announced Nissan only planned to make 8,000 units of the figuro but demand was so significant that they ended up building another 12,000 units for a total of 20,000 and even then it was so popular they had to create a lottery system to decide who was given the opportunity to buy a figuro it was a huge hit in Japan in the late 80s now there are a lot of fantastic quirks about the bizarre and wacky figuro I'm going to cover them all in this video but one of my very favorite is the colors to you this car might look green but no it's actually spring you see the figuro came in only four colors and each one was meant to represent a season in the calendar in the year so this green color which I think was technically called like Emerald Mist was the spring color there was also a light blue that was summer there was a gray that was Winter and there was sort of a light brown which was fall the four colors representing the Four Seasons and things only get weirder from there now one of the figo's most distinctive quirks is its design and specifically its 1950s inspired design language which uses a lot of the tropes and touches of 1950s Vehicles the best example of course is the chrome trim which goes down the sides by the 80s chrome trim was long gone but it was common in the ' 50s and so the figuro has it an upper Chrome strip and a lower Chrome strip really emphasizing that 50s design language you also had large circular lights up in front just like 50s cars did and in back just like 50s cars did again to mimic that era of design then there were the wheels which you can see are white with a silver dish in the middle these were meant to represent the white wall tires that were common on 1950s cars they couldn't actually sell it with white wall tires that wasn't a thing anymore and when you replace the tires it ruined the look of the car so they turned the wheels into sort of a faux white wall tire look with a chromed hubc cap or wheel cover in the middle to further drive home that 50s design language point and the Chrome continued on the bumpers you can see a chrome home front bumper here just like the big old chrome bumpers in 50s cars well here it's in a late ' 80s early '90s car but it looks the part same deal in the back you had another chrome bumper that there that just looked perfect and wonderful really the figuro is a pretty amazing take on a 50s car just scaled down to late 80s early 9s Japanese car dimensions if you told AI to make you a 50s car but really small in Japanese this is exactly what it would show you the crazy thing is Nissan actually built it and Beyond the 50s look of this car there a few other interesting exterior quirks one of which was there was no Nissan badging or branding anywhere on this car above the license plate on a chromed surround you had figuro printed but not Nissan up front it said figuro as well with a special distinctive emblem and it didn't say Nissan but very very tiny that was it you didn't have any other Nissan logos anywhere on this car even the key doesn't say Nissan but instead it says figuro in the same distinctive font letting everyone know that this was something special something different from an ordinary Nissan but it is when you climb inside the figuro that you were really hit with with an explosion of 1950s retro insanity and wonderful and amazing quirks just open up the door and the first thing you see is the seat this over stuffed leather seat with lines down the center looks just like what you would have gotten in a 50s car nice piping on the sides this really looks like a 50s car bucket seat which you would expect for a 50s retro car the steering wheel is this thin rimmed three-spoke painted Affair that again REM Rems you exactly of what you would have found in a 50s car but the especially great thing they've done in here is the wonderful use of chrome all throughout for instance the gauges the tachometer and the speedometer you have this chrome trim like you would have had back then these switches to turn on various things feel like 1950s Style old school switches to turn on stuff instead of the plastic buttons that would have been around in the early 9s even the CL climate controls have this chrome face plate on them as you can see and then painted switches that you move them side to side interestingly the climate control display is all in English it's almost as if they knew that this crazy car would someday be highly desired in the UK where it's really popular and in the United States and it would eventually find its way there and so English made the most sense for the presentation of this stuff next up check out the radio which is of course in the center control stack here the tuner dials for the radio are old school chromed ones that you would normally see in an old ' 50s radio and the painted buttons further drive home that point plus the clear circular buttons in the center kind of have a similar feel to an Old School radio something you definitely wouldn't have seen in the late 80s and early 90s also similar to a car from the ' 50s is the turn signal stocks which you can see are pain pained and very thin those were two common features of cars from that era the signal stocks and it's what you have here in the figuro to mimic that the warning lights as you can see over on the side are all Chrome rimmed and individual warning lights just like you got as warning lights started to develop in cars in the 50s and 60s it works even the font they use in the gauges is sort of this old school serious back in the day font not something you would have used in the 880s with its italics and orange numbering it fit the feel of this car and then there was the flu DE logo you can see it in the floor mat sort of like this flower design that showed up all over the place in this car you can see that design is also repeated on the horn in the center of the steering wheel the Chrome surround on the horn shares that flower design same deal on the window switches the power window switches have that same flower design not just your typical window switches and the Chrome surround of the door handle also has that same flower design you saw in those other places if you look further you'll see it in other spots the climate control face plate the edges of it have that sort of flower design curve like you saw elsewhere and even the pieces on the stereo that you twist these little Chrome tabs that come off the dial those share that same flower design you saw in so many other places you can also find that flower design on the door sill getting inside this car you have this chrome strip like you would in a 50s car and it ends with this sort of three-pronged flower just to drive home the point and bring you some 50s continuity but what you are undoubtedly most interested in with the figuro is the top and how it works and what it does so here's the deal right now as you can see the top is down and I can stick my hand out the Glorious roof and it's all open air but if you want to put the top up you start in the driver's footwell where you see a little switch you pull that switch toward you and it releases the top boot in back you go back there you lift up the top Boot and that is where the top is stored and from there you lift the top out of the top boot you take the top and pull it all the way over the car and stick it roughly in place and then you close the top boot then you get back inside the car and latch it down manually now this is a multi-step process that is a little bit annoying and it requires you to get out of the car and it's the same deal when you put the top back down you have to first unlatch the top boot in the driver's footwell with that switch then you go back there open up the top boot you make sure the top has been unlatched in the interior already then you push it back and then you kind of stuff it down into the top boot until it's all the way in place and then you close it down it's an annoying process that requires you to pull a switch manually unlatch the roof send it back get out of the car open the top boot put the top in and close it it's a long process and so it's a little bit annoying but the benefit is that when the top goes down it isn't just sitting back there bunched up looking ugly it's actually inside the top Boot and so the lines of the car are preserved the ridiculous style of the car stays the same and that's a pretty cool benefit the real drawback of the convertible top in this car though is that even when the roof is down and you're in convertible mode the roof rails on the side all of the sides of the car are still in place now this was also a 1950s design feature it's meant to mimic the citrone 2cv the Fiat 500 both of those cars had big roofs that could fold back and the sides would stay in place but it doesn't feel as converti as maybe you would want still that's how the top works in the figura and by the way it's worth pointing out that when you put the roof down there is one additional step that you have to do that you don't do when you put it back up specifically you have to snap this leather piece into place now technically you don't have to do this it's more cosmetic than anything but the car does look best with the leather snapped in and if it does start raining with the roof down you don't want water to get in there so it keeps like debris out of the top boot area but that's the convertible top procedure in the Nissan figuro but there are still more figuro quirks to cover let's start with the back seat which yes exists it is tremendously tiny it loses the 50s over stuffed style of the front seats but it's there if you absolutely need it for a chinchilla that's the back seat it's really small although there is infinite Headroom with the roof down so I guess there's that benefit now the other interesting thing about the figuro is it has a trunk the top boot takes up 2/3 of the rear of the car and the trunk is given only the last third but it does exist to open it up you stick the key and you twist and then it lifts upwards much like the engine cover in a Volkswagen Beetle or other rear engine cars from this era it's also kind of a 50s throwback if you think about it but you lift it up and you can see there's space in there there's also a spare tire in there so there's not that much space and it's not exactly carpeted and it's not exactly easy to get to because you got to lift this up and then there's a prop that you can stick in place but even then you got to reach all the way down to get your stuff it's not exactly designed to be as practical as possible but then again you do have extra storage in the rear seats since they cannot be used by human beings and finally we move under the hood in the figuro which is front hinged you open it up this way and it reveals the massive power train specifically a turbocharged 1 L 4 cylinder engine that makes about 75 horsepower and 75 pound feet of torque this is where the car significantly differs from 1950s vehicles in the sense that it is such a small engine although the total amount of power is not all that different nor is the acceleration when you think about it but that's the powertrain in the figuro now all figuro models were front-wheel drive and all figuro models had an automatic transmission the figuro was never made with a manual this was also true of the Nissan s cargo the other really cool Pike Factory car they were automatic only but the B1 and the pow were available with automatic or manual transmission so if you wanted to roll your own Gears in a pike Factory car you had to get one of those you couldn't do it here instead 75 horses and an automatic this wasn't made for driving Thrills but it's still a thrilling car all right driving the Nissan figuro and what a ridiculous car it is you can see I have the roof open or off I'm not sure the correct terminology but it is a wonderful magical open air experience as you can imagine especially if you've been following my channel for a while I love this car I owned a different Pike Factory car myself I had an S cargo to me the S cargo is the most interesting of the pike Factory cars but there is absolutely no doubt that the figuro is the most desirable on the market they sell for the most money they have the highest demand because it's a convertible and because to a lot of people the figuro looks the coolest it certainly had the most effort put into it to make it different and special and unique and exciting uh the S cargo as cool as it was on the outside was really just kind of a fairly traditional car on the inside this obviously not like that at all as you've seen so what is the Driving Experience like well we are right-and Drive obviously all of the figuros were since they were all sold new in Japan and we are automatic transmission which again all of the figuros were as a result you might think the car is not particularly fun to drive but that is not the case on the contrary it is quite exciting to drive for several reasons number one you're acutely aware at any Point while driving this car of exactly what it is that you're driving like you you realize very easily that you're in something absurd and ridiculous and that adds to the fun a lot of absurd and ridiculous cars on the inside don't really let you remember that they're absurd and ridiculous it's more for people on the outside but this car you look out over the Easter colored Bodywork you can clearly see that and you have this whole interior that looks like the ' 50s in this laughable and ridiculous way and so this car looks wonderfully absurd and it feels wonderfully absurd when you're driving it which is so much fun it contributes to the fun then you have the open roof situation which is obviously great you have a you have a you have a full open roof now I admit it feels a little bit more claustrophobic or closed in than a regular convertible because the the sides kind of here stay in place which is a little bit disappointing but the benefit of this is for them obviously cheaper manufacturing which meant a cheaper price when the car was sold new and I'm sure there's a safety benefit of having this stuff still here and it does keep you a little less windy so but you do get a full experience of a convertible uh in terms of like the feel and the wind especially as you turn around and look around it's just a really cool thing now from a pure Driving Experience perspective this car of course is not particularly engaging or exciting that's not really the point of this car though it's fine in terms of acceleration drivability it keeps up with traffic no problem like it's not too slow it's not too that you're worried about dying when you drive around and behind a yurus doesn't feel considerably smaller than that it is but it doesn't it's not like I'm riding a bicycle here um or in a smart cross blade generally speaking it it feels just fine on the road um but it's a car that I would definitely want to limit to you know some lower distance driving around town that sort of thing that's what this is for that's where this is most fun you get out on freeways that wasn't the original intent of this car and I think it wouldn't really reward you with the Driving Experience but it is a very cute little car and it's it's it's just fun to drive around cuz it's so cute and so little and so ridiculous even though it may not be actually enjoyable to drive in the traditional sense certainly isn't a sports car you're certainly not ripping it around but you are sitting behind this great 50 style dashboard with this kind you know thin rimmed steering wheel with chrome accents everywhere and an open roof and it does feel special and honestly as much as I don't love driving right-hand drive cars cars that generally applies to performance cars where you're really trying to enjoy them in this car I think it kind of adds to the novelty it's like hey I have this ridiculous car it has a ridiculous look a ridiculous roof a ridiculous backstory and it's also right-and drive and that just makes it even more ridiculous the fun thing about this car is it's basically impossible not to have fun when you're driving it around it's basically impossible not to be smiling and not to think that it's cool and cute and I love cars like that it may not be the same way of of of you know have fun is my Countach it's the same deal on the Countach you get in that car it's impossible not to have fun this is the the same just comes at it from a totally different angle but at the end of the day the smile on your face is still like the same and it still makes you happy to drive um and I love that I love cars that just make you happy and this is definitely one of them what a ridiculous little creature and so that's the Nissan figuro I love this thing it is hilarious and cute and weird and crooky and bizarre and I have always wanted to review one and I'm so glad I did and now you can buy this one on cars and bids and now it's time to give the figuro a Doug score and the Doug score is here 45 out of 100 which places the figuro here against some sort of similar cars the figuro does well in this company even though the a E1 and cappuccino are much more driver focused the figuro isn't as fun to drive as those cars but it's way more comfortable and it's still as much of a joy just in a totally different way the figuro really is a cool quirky exciting little car and it turns a lot of heads for its price point it may not be a Supercar but it'll still put a smile on your face every single time you get behind the wheel or even when you just see it parked in your [Music] garage for

Channel: Doug DeMuro

Views: 401,853

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Id: 39C8iHcXW0c

Length: 23min 11sec (1391 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 25 2024