Nissan Tsuru: A Mexican Favourite That Won't Return For 2018

You might have noticed that I haven’t been particularly active on Car Throttle over the holidays. Why not? Well, I was lucky enough to spend Christmas in Mexico, meaning that I didn’t have to suffer through -40 degree wind chills back home. This came at the expense of reliable WiFi, and since roaming charges would exceed my life’s savings, I was forced to disconnect for a week. However, this allowed me to experience a car culture unlike anywhere else in the world.

Which brings me to what this article is all about—the Nissan Tsuru. If you’ve ever been to Mexico, you’ll know that these things are everywhere. In fact, until 2011, the Tsuru was easily Mexico’s best-selling car. The Mexicans use the Tsuru as a police car, taxi cab and a reliable family car. It represents Mexican culture better than Taco Bell.

And yet, to much of the rest of the world, the Tsuru is really nothing more than a 1992 Nissan Sentra. Indeed, the Tsuru itself was in constant production from 1992 until last year, receiving very few changes along the way. This allowed it to be ridiculously cheap—the top-of-the-line “Buen Camino” final edition sold for less than £7000 brand new in 2017.

Of course, for that price, you shouldn’t expect a lot in the way of standard features. Remote keyless entry, for instance, would be considered high luxury on a Tsuru. So would power locks and windows, for that matter. But that’s just fine in Mexico, where no-frills motoring is extremely popular. Money is a little tighter in Mexico than most developed nations, so people here are willing to accept bare-bones packaging just so that they can afford to get on the road. In a lot of ways, I actually like this kind of car-buying mentality. It’s the same reason why James May loves the Dacia Sandero.

Unfortunately, there are some pretty big drawbacks to driving a 25-year-old economy car. As I learned from daily-driving a 1981 Datsun pickup truck for a year, safety has progressed a lot over the years. We take things like air bags, ABS and traction control for granted on modern cars, yet they aren’t available on the Tsuru. Your best safety feature on the Tsuru, in reality, is not crashing. The old-school chassis design won’t help you out too much if you happen to get in a collision, a fact backed up by an NCAP rating of zero stars and an estimated 4,000 highway deaths in Tsurus between 2007 and 2012.

And this is exactly the reason why Nissan decided to discontinue the Tsuru in 2017. In terms of safety, it’s just not acceptable anymore. The Mexican government apparently agreed, introducing tougher safety standards for new vehicles. But all is not lost for Mexicans who just want a cheap, unpretentious set of wheels. They’ve got plenty to choose from, including the Brazilian-built Volkswagen Gol, the Renault Sandero, and the Nissan Tiida/Versa. And it’ll probably be a very long time before Tsurus become a thing of the past on Mexican roads.

But I think the death of the Nissan Tsuru might just be one of the auto world’s biggest losses of 2017. In a country that built and sold the original Volkswagen Beetle until 2003, the Nissan Tsuru was just as much of a people’s car. Cheap, tough, simple to fix and ubiquitous, the Tsuru very much became a part of daily life in a nation. How many times can you say that about a single car in the 21st century?