Boxy cars are good. And they don’t get much boxier than today’s Nice Price or No Dice Nissan, which means it must be good. This one adds some frivolity to its space efficiency, but will its price prove just as fanciful?
According to the Roman philosopher Cicero, “Nothing is more noble, nothing more venerable, than loyalty.” Per a 2020 J.D. Power study, Subaru has the greatest owner loyalty in the car biz, with 60.5 percent of current owners claiming they would re-up with the brand when replacement time rolled around.
The owner of the 1979 Subaru 1600 Wagon we looked at yesterday seemingly didn’t read the same study results. Or perhaps they did and traded the 1600 in for another Subaru. We won’t ever know. What we do know is that the little AWD wagon offered a selling price of $7,499, and that didn’t engender all that much of a loyal following among our voting. By the end of the day, the result was a 63 percent No Dice loss. I guess that means we should look at another brand.
Nissan execs probably wish their brand enjoyed the near Taylor Swift levels of loyalty that its competitor Subaru does. Hmmm, I wonder if Tay-Tay drives a Subaru? In fact, aside from the Z Car, Nissan doesn’t show much loyalty to its own model names. How could the company expect buyers to do otherwise?
As an example of this pump-and-dump practice, Nissan only sold the clever Cube car here in the States for a short five years before killing it and its nameplate due to poor sales. The company did this without seemingly addressing the cause of the car’s poor popularity.
It wasn’t being a cookie-cutter design or an over-familiarity with the Cube’s looks that caused it to fail in the U.S. since it remains to this day one of the funkiest cars Nissan ever foisted on the market, And, while there were prior Cubes in other markets, it was a one-and-done model here in the States.
The unique and iconic design features a signature asymmetrical rear end with the window glass wrapping around one side of the car and a pillar on the other. Nissan went full send on this design element, too, offering mirrored versions of the window design and side-opening rear hatch for, respectively, RHD and LHD markets. Other fun design cues include beveled exterior window openings, tiny four-spoke alloy wheels, and a water ripple headliner that’s centered on the interior light.
This 2009 Nissan Cube adds to the funky-fresh design mix with some wonderfully eclectic blue and teal flames that, like the body design, differ from one side to the other. Nice detail!
Perhaps more importantly to our line of thinking, it also comes with a six-speed manual gearbox bolted to its 122 horsepower 1.8-liter MR18 engine. Most of these cars were sold with Nissan’s CVT, a far-less engaging belt-box that’s the transmission equivalent of institutional housing. The six-speed should liven things up appreciably.
Being a boxy car, this Cube offers a TARDIS effect of being roomier inside than its outer dimensions imply. According to Nissan, the interior design was intended to remind occupants of being in a cosseting hot tub, hence the water ripple effect on the ceiling, I guess.
Dark gray mouse fur upholstery and plastics give no such impression here, but all look to be in fine shape. The car does come with such niceties as power windows and locks and working A/C and heat. The seller claims it’s “good on gas” and notes that it comes with a clean title and presents with 2024 tags. There are presently 120,000 miles under this Cube’s reasonably small tires.
That’s all a lot for this Nissan to have going for it. What we need to find out now is whether it all adds up to a $5,500 asking. What’s your take on this custom Cube and that price tag? Does that feel like a deal for so funky and functional a car? Or is that too much now for a car that never generated enough loyalty when it was new?
You decide!
Sacramento, California, Craigslist, or go here if the ad disappears.
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