The Nissan Micra is a small and cheerful new car option that starts at under $10K – but as I discovered this past week, it’s not quite as tiny as its name might indicate. Although the subcompact is at the low end of the size spectrum – especially compared to the behemoth SUVs that currently rule the roads – it’s a bit bigger than comparable, although pricier, cars like the Fiat 500.
I should have taken this into account before agreeing to document just how many unusual places you could park the hatch in a pinch. For a car that measures just under four metres long and just over 1.6 metres wide, the options for stowing away are plentiful – as long as you get creative.
Check out these seven places where the Nissan Micra fits – and the surprising spots where it won’t.
YES – Shopping Cart Shelter
How many times have you looked over at those smug shopping carts, so warm and dry in their sassy little shelter, and thought, “That should really be a grocery garage for my car?” While that impulse might have to remain in the realm of fantasy for most vehicle owners, if you’re driving a Micra it’s time to stake your claim to the most protected spot in the entire lot. Forget having to worry about carts dinging your doors, careless drivers backing into your bumpers, or birds taking aim from up above – the shopping car shelter is your personal, private, parking pod.
YES – Skateboard Half-Pipe
Time to grind out a 720 in the Micra! Well, maybe not, but if street parking is full near the local skate park then you’ll probably have no trouble stashing your Nissan in the middle of the half-pipe overnight. Just make sure you get it out of there before it becomes part of someone’s GoPro trick video and you have to get it completely repainted.
KINDA, MAYBE, NOT REALLY – Standard Dumpster
Who hasn’t fantasized about sliding around a corner into an alleyway with the police in hot pursuit, only to drive one’s tiny car up inside a dumpster with a trap-door cut into it so you can disappear into the night? Okay, maybe that’s my fantasy and not yours, but either way it turns out to be, for all intents and purposes, very tricky to accomplish.
The standard 10-yard dumpster, which holds 7,600 litres of trash, is just barely long enough to stow the Nissan Micra, and once you’re in there, you’ll probably have to cut a hole in the roof to get out because there’ll be just a few centimetres of space on either side of the doors. Of course, it won’t do you any good, anyways, because at 1.5 m tall, the Micra will stick out the top of a standard dumpster and give you away to all but the most myopic of constables. This one’s a draw.
YES – On the Deck of Your Yacht
Helicopters are so nouveau riche. Want to make a real impression? Park the Nissan Micra on your helipad to let the captain moored at the slip beside yours in Monaco know that you’ve truly arrived. If you want to up the ante even further, you can install a water slide wide enough to move the car from deck to dock as quickly as possible.
NOPE – Full-Size Pickup Truck Bed
While it’s a bit of a cliché to claim that the latest subcompact car du jour would look cute in the back of some monster bro-dozer, the reality is very few automobiles actually possess the kind of modest dimensions required to shoehorn themselves into the cargo bed of even the biggest pickup. Heavy-duty rigs with eight-foot beds still aren’t long enough, or even wide enough, to get more than three quarters of the Micra inside of them, if it were even possible to squeeze between the wheel wells. A Nissan may not be a sheet of 4x8 plywood, but a Smart car comes pretty damn close.
YES – Shipping Container, Italian Job-style
Step 1 – Park the Micra inside a shipping container.
Step 2 – Wait inside until you think everyone’s gone home for the night.
Step 3 – Emerge triumphant to pull off the heist of the century.
Step 4 – Realize you’re trapped at sea miles from land.
Step 5 – Become a sailor, see the world.
YES – Cube Truck
A cube truck is kind of like a shipping container on wheels, which means you’re guaranteed to be able to find one at your local U-Haul that can swallow the Nissan Micra. Why would you want to park inside a cube truck? If you liked the idea of the shopping cart shelter garage, then you’ll love the concept of a protected parking spot that you can take with you everywhere you go! You’ll probably never even need to roll the car out of the hauler ever again. Just embrace it. You’re a trucker now.
You may also like
