A ‘very British’ Japanese car
Nissan Figaro, la voiture Japonaise qui fait un tabac au Royaume-Uni.
Connaissez-vous la Nissan Figaro ? Cette improbable petite voiture aux couleurs pastel semble tout droit sortie des années 1950. Pourtant, c’est en 1991 qu’elle fut commercialisée par le constructeur automobile japonais. Son succès ne s’est jamais démenti jusqu’à aujourd’hui, où on la trouve par milliers... dans les rues du Royaume-Uni ! Comment expliquer l’engouement des Britanniques pour ce modèle japonais ?
LONDON — It just might be the most adorable thing on four wheels. People smile when one cruises by. They point, they wave, they use the word “cute” a lot, and they ask, “What is that?” The tiny Nissan Figaro has an almost
1. wheel roue / to cruise by passer (lentement) / to point montrer du doigt / to wave faire signe de la main / cute mignon / tiny (tout) petit / almost presque / cartoonish design that is guaranteed to stand out. To an American living in Britain, who regularly spots pristine Figaros, it would appear to be a highly popular model that was made recently. Every part of that guess is wrong: The Figaro is rather old, built for the 1991 model year, and there never were large numbers anywhere. Nissan never even exported it from Japan. Yet here it is in Britain, in the thousands, an oddball little convertible with an ardent following and a backstory that is even odder.
QUIRKY DESIGNS
2. Britain never had dominant carmakers like Ford, General Motors and Chrysler. Instead, for generations, it had a profusion of small-to-medium manufacturers. Those carmakers produced a much wider array of designs than their U.S. counterparts, a good number of them quirky, small, underpowered, none too practical — and beloved by their many admirers. But in the face of foreign competition, recessions, bankruptcies and consolidation, British car manufacturing plummeted from its peak in the early 1970s. Brands like Morris, Triumph, Austin, Sunbeam, Daimler, Rover and Reliant died off.
“It really harks back to the more interesting cars in the past.”
3. An increasingly competitive and global market had less room for eccentric cars, British or not, or for models that sell only a few thousand. “Cars have lost their personality,” said Nic Caraccio, a devoted Figaro owner and trader who lives outside London. “If you go out on the street now, the Citroëns and Vauxhalls and Skodas and Peugeots, they’re all black or white or
silver, and they all look the same. Not the Fig.” Definitely not.
A NON-BRITISH INDUSTRY
4. The Figaro may look a bit like a sporty roadster, but performance is hardly the point. “It really harks back to the more interesting cars in the past, when there was more of a homegrown industry,” said Steve Huntingford, editor of the British car buying magazine What Car?
5. Vehicle production in Britain gradually recovered from its 1980s nadir, but what has emerged is an industry that is not very British. There are six large-scale carmakers in the country — and every one is foreignowned. Niche luxury brands of British heritage like Bentley, Rolls-Royce and Lotus are also now foreign-owned, as is the maker of London’s famed black cabs. The few British makes that are manufactured in Britain by British companies, like Aston Martin and Morgan, account for less than 1 percent of the country’s car production.
A NISSAN BESTSELLER
6. Nissan built the Figaro in pale shades of aqua, green, gray and taupe — one of a few idiosyncratic, limited-edition models the company made in that era. The company originally planned to build just 8,000 Figaros, priced at about $8,300, and strictly for the Japanese market. Even before sales began, it was clear that demand would far exceed that figure, so Nissan held a lottery to choose its buyers. Celebrities were among those in the running, generating still more interest. Nissan expanded production to 20,000, but even so, most would-be buyers were turned away. Despite the unmet demand, the company stuck to its plan to make the car for just one year.
7. It took several years before a semiregular pipeline to Britain was created by people like Caraccio, who buy, repair and resell cars, and who began going to Japan to find Figaros and send them back a few at a time. The first big Figaro gathering here was held in 2008. More than 3,000 of the cars are registered as being in active use in Britain, but numbers are no longer rising, and the pipeline has slowed to a trickle. “There’s only so many, and they’ve been around a while,” said Peter Pattemore, who drives a Figaro (named Jimmy), as does his wife, Sandra (hers is Sally). “But we’re going to keep them as long as we can.”