So recently spent a few days out at the beach in Florida - had a bunch of airline and Expedia credits due to two cancelled trips so decided to get myself and my other half out of the same 4 walls we have been living, working, eating and sleeping in for the past 3+ months.
Flew into Tampa and ended up renting with Enterprise, because I was burning up credit with Expedia my Emerald Club did not afford me any special kinda perks or select your own vehicle (don't think Enterprise does that anyways). Was booked into a "Nissan Versa" or similar but when agent took me out just a handful of Sentra's, 1 Chevy Spark, 1 Grand Caravans and I believe an Infiniti or two. There were no Versa so Enterprise agent made it a HUGE deal she was giving me a free upgrade to a Sentra, in typical Enterprise fashion tried the hard sell on the upgrades for pre-pay fuel and collision waiver. Ok I am straying off topic here.
So here I am in a prior generation 2019 Nissan Sentra SV with silver exterior and black cloth interior - its just taking us from Tampa airport the beach and back which is about 45 mins each way, and going to make 1 run into Tampa to visit friends and maybe a little driving around at the beach, I would have been fine with a Versa too because it was just short hauling around Tampa Bay area.
Powertrain - 1.8L w/CVT. Wow - I have not minded the CVT with the larger Nissan engines (2.4 and 3.5) but with the 1.8 it is painfully slow and can be downright dangerous if you get caught off guard while you wait for it to rev up. Just keeping it up with traffic on the slow 35 MPH roads it would rev 3k-3.5k then do some weird fake shifts - freeway merges were just mat the accelerator and listen to the engine angrily buzz away and you may be up to 55 at the end of an on ramp.
Handling/Ride/Drive: - Nothing to write home about, competent is how I would gauge it. Not a car I would try to do some higher speed handling maneuvers in. Brake pedal was awful - felt like trying to push a wooden peg through a bucket of wet concrete, ZERO feel or feedback. Will say it did have a nice compliant ride.
Interior: - One positive is that the main interior switchgear is all the decent parts bin stuff shared with the other Nissan and Infiniti sedans (turn and wiper stalks, window and lock switches, overhead light panel, etc.) - really all the controls except the gear shift operated quite nicely. Seats were not comfortable at all and felt like you were perched on top of them instead of sitting in them - driving position was awful. Discomfort started kicking in after about 30 minutes behind the wheel.
Overall: - I will say it had very good air conditioning and got decent fuel economy (ended at 32.7MPG per trip computer) - that was pretty much about it. Other than that there were really no other redeeming qualities, even 4-5 years ago when it was only 2 or 3 years into its model cycle it ended up in a distant last in a 5 car comparison against the Civic, Mazda3, Cruze & Elantra. Car and Driver comments in that comparison pretty much highlight my same gripes with the rental Sentra that I had.
I don't know how Nissan moved so many of these things considering there were so many better options during its run - the 1st generation Cruze 1.4T I had as a rental back some time ago was better than this thing, 2nd gen Cruze blows it out of the water. Hope Nissan has actually tried to do better with this newest generation of Sentra and Versa, they have done quite well with making an overall desirable package with their Altima and Maxima (well lets exclude CVT reliability from this) but the Sentra and Versa always seemed to be an after thought.
Flew into Tampa and ended up renting with Enterprise, because I was burning up credit with Expedia my Emerald Club did not afford me any special kinda perks or select your own vehicle (don't think Enterprise does that anyways). Was booked into a "Nissan Versa" or similar but when agent took me out just a handful of Sentra's, 1 Chevy Spark, 1 Grand Caravans and I believe an Infiniti or two. There were no Versa so Enterprise agent made it a HUGE deal she was giving me a free upgrade to a Sentra, in typical Enterprise fashion tried the hard sell on the upgrades for pre-pay fuel and collision waiver. Ok I am straying off topic here.
So here I am in a prior generation 2019 Nissan Sentra SV with silver exterior and black cloth interior - its just taking us from Tampa airport the beach and back which is about 45 mins each way, and going to make 1 run into Tampa to visit friends and maybe a little driving around at the beach, I would have been fine with a Versa too because it was just short hauling around Tampa Bay area.
Powertrain - 1.8L w/CVT. Wow - I have not minded the CVT with the larger Nissan engines (2.4 and 3.5) but with the 1.8 it is painfully slow and can be downright dangerous if you get caught off guard while you wait for it to rev up. Just keeping it up with traffic on the slow 35 MPH roads it would rev 3k-3.5k then do some weird fake shifts - freeway merges were just mat the accelerator and listen to the engine angrily buzz away and you may be up to 55 at the end of an on ramp.
Handling/Ride/Drive: - Nothing to write home about, competent is how I would gauge it. Not a car I would try to do some higher speed handling maneuvers in. Brake pedal was awful - felt like trying to push a wooden peg through a bucket of wet concrete, ZERO feel or feedback. Will say it did have a nice compliant ride.
Interior: - One positive is that the main interior switchgear is all the decent parts bin stuff shared with the other Nissan and Infiniti sedans (turn and wiper stalks, window and lock switches, overhead light panel, etc.) - really all the controls except the gear shift operated quite nicely. Seats were not comfortable at all and felt like you were perched on top of them instead of sitting in them - driving position was awful. Discomfort started kicking in after about 30 minutes behind the wheel.
Overall: - I will say it had very good air conditioning and got decent fuel economy (ended at 32.7MPG per trip computer) - that was pretty much about it. Other than that there were really no other redeeming qualities, even 4-5 years ago when it was only 2 or 3 years into its model cycle it ended up in a distant last in a 5 car comparison against the Civic, Mazda3, Cruze & Elantra. Car and Driver comments in that comparison pretty much highlight my same gripes with the rental Sentra that I had.
I don't know how Nissan moved so many of these things considering there were so many better options during its run - the 1st generation Cruze 1.4T I had as a rental back some time ago was better than this thing, 2nd gen Cruze blows it out of the water. Hope Nissan has actually tried to do better with this newest generation of Sentra and Versa, they have done quite well with making an overall desirable package with their Altima and Maxima (well lets exclude CVT reliability from this) but the Sentra and Versa always seemed to be an after thought.