Pink T shirts, Scarves and unnecessary Sunglasses. (Nissan Figaro)

Member Name: Muffin_the_Mule

Product:	Nissan Figaro
Date:	14/04/09 (697 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Its a car

Disadvantages: ..

When a girl looks, then points and says

"I want THAT car!"

You know you can relax and expect to follow her gaze to discover it to be a classic or a prestige or the Batmobile.
On this occasion however, the gaze was fixed to a tiny picture on the back of a paperback book, and the pointing was emphatic.

After some long and dedicated research, namely Googling 'noddy car', I could formally identify the vehicle as a 1990 Nissan Figaro.

The search to find a car to actually buy developed rapidly after trawling various sites thrown out by Google and after several fruitless weekends going to view examples for sale whose visible rust patches and tatty interiors had seen better days.
We weren't put off or search after each disappointing journey back home, only slightly more enthusiastic about actually getting one of our own and even I was feeling more comfortable with the prospect of actually driving a Figaro around.

In public.

My initial fears of it being an apostrophe laden 'girl's car' were allayed after test driving a few different ones, and discovering they were all actually a great laugh to drive. The result was that I test drove every Figaro wearing a silly grin.
This specially adopted facial feature may have been a contributing factor to the general reaction of the pedestrian public when you are in a Figaro. Most ignore you, but occasionally people point or they wave, or once, they follow you for 3 miles to your home to ask you what it is that you're driving. The result was that I drove every Figaro with a silly grin, and slightly paranoid, but feeling just a bit funky. Oh yes.

They are not girly, they are funky. Not girly. Funky. This is also the excuse I use when I wear pink t shirts, scarves when it's not cold or sunglasses when there are clouds everywhere. Not girly. Funky.

This change of heart was helped along when I started to learn more about the Figaro's history.
The next paragraph will sound better, as ably demonstrated by Jeremy Clarkson on Top Gear, if I ask you all to adopt a nasally dysfunctional tone:
There were only 20000 made between 1990 and 1991, demand from the car's debut at the 1989 Tokyo Motor show was so high that Nissan ran a lottery system to decide who would own one. Ooooh Matron!. They came in four colours, lapis grey, topaz mist, pale aqua and emerald green. They have a one litre turbo charged engine from a nissan micra of the same era so parts are cheap and all models were fitted with automatic transmission, which I find weird on long journeys because my left foot has nothing to do. What not to do, in an automatic car, is to forget you are in an automatic car and press the break pedal with your left foot. If you do this, you, and all of your passengers' faces will whack the windscreens. As I'm sure anyone who has 'done a leftie' in an automatic car would verify. Yes.
You can stop the voice now, unless you prefer to keep it up and if that's the case, crack on.

As the Japanese are one of the few countries around the world who also drive on the correct side of the road, all Figaro's are also all helpfully right hand drive.
The low maintenance and running costs being as they are the equivalent to running a Micra, along side their added funkyness meant that we soon found a Figaro we were happy with, in a colour that whilst not an original in being dark blue, was still classy, we finally bought one for £5995 from a specialised Figaro importer in Redbourn, Hertfordshire.
The price was slightly above the average for others we'd seen on our travels but the added security of having a 1 year warrantee thrown in gave us confidence in stretching our budget.

That was three years ago, and amazingly, the car has not only held it's value but it's actually gone up with similar mileage and condition vehicles going for up to £8000. If I had known this would be the case, and if I had had the funds, I'd have bought two.

The first thing we did after getting ours home on the first day was to name it. Sorry,
Her.
We named her Flo.
As in Flo the Figaro. And Flo is referred to as a who not a what.
Funky. Not girly.

In the three years we've had flo, we have only had one mechanical breakdown, which happened to be on our way home to London from Manchester after a 500 mile round trip weekend visit, and the impact was softened by the very lovely RAC man, who towed us for the final miles and diagnosed the correct problem - something very technical sounding about engine things that our local garage easily repaired for £120 including wishing it was still under warrantee and VAT. Our only other issue has been occasional failures to start on cold mornings, but the cars first replacement battery since production has since fixed that.
These are just minor irritations that are soon forgotten, especially in the summer months when Flo really comes into her own. (see?) With the roof down, which takes just a couple of minutes and a bit of lifting and folding, and the music on the built in CD player is turned up, the fun factor only increases.


Most of our trips out in Flo are either on our own, or as two, and although cited as a four seated car, the back seats are mostly only available to children and dwarves, unless the roof is down and then you can get 2 more almost full sized people in the back. Luckily, almost everyone we know isn't full sized. Only me, at 6'5" is full sized, on my own personal scale of sizing people.
My bride-to-be drives Flo to work every day, which at a 20 mile each way commute involving the M1 AND the North Circular is hardly a breeze, but she still loves Flo so much she has even planned to use her at our up comign wedding.
Not for her car, you understand though. That's going to be an old Bentley.
Flo's for me to drive. Marvellous stuff.

Summary: Woop

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