Late last year, Nissan announced its entry into the highly competitive sub-4 metre UV segment and that too in a grand fashion by offering Magnite at the lowest price. It was later overthrown by its French cousin Renault Kiger to take the honours of being the most affordable subcompact SUV in India by a whisker.
The launch of Magnite has given the Japanese carmaker a fresh lease of life in India as bookings had crossed the 35,000-mark within one month of its launch. At such a low price offering, many suspected Magnite’s overall built quality and safety to be below par.
However, it took everyone by surprise when it scored a 4-star rating for overall safety in ASEAN NCAP earlier this year. The catch here is that the model tested in the crash tests was an Indonesian-spec model.
Although the Magnite retailed in India is manufactured in India itself and specifications of both the India-spec and Indonesian-spec model are more or less similar. Now, Nissan has come out and confirmed in a tweet that Magnite manufactured and sold in India is in fact as safe as its Indonesian counterpart and shares its four-star safety rating.
This might affect a lot of people’s buying decisions who were looking to own a Magnite due to its value for money offerings but were doubtful of its safety credentials. In the safety crash test conducted earlier this year, Magnite scored an impressive 39.02 points for adult occupant protection and a decent 16.31 points for child occupant protection. In the Safety Assist category, the subcompact UV secured 15.28 points thus obtaining an overall score of 70.60 points.
Along with a host of creature comforts, Nissan offers a bunch of safety features in its equipment kit including ABS (anti-lock braking system) with EBD, dual front airbags, rear parking sensors, seatbelt reminder, and automatic warning hazard on heavy braking as standard.
The higher-specced trims further boast of safety features such as electronic stability control (ESC), brake assist, ISOFIX child seat mounts, traction control, a 360-degree parking camera, hill start assist and a tyre pressure monitoring system.
Magnite is offered with two engine options- a 1.0-litre naturally aspirated petrol unit and a 1.0-litre three-cylinder turbo petrol unit. The former produces 71 bhp and 96 Nm of peak torque while the latter kicks out 99 bhp and 160 Nm (152 Nm for AT variants) of peak torque. Both units are offered with a 5-speed manual gearbox as standard with the option of a CVT automatic on the turbocharged unit. It is currently retailed at a price bracket of Rs 5.49 lakh – Rs 9.45 lakh (ex-showroom).