no, i'm fairly sure the nissan micra is not available in the US. we do have the maxima... far more US style.
standards have changed in the last 5-10 years (we're starting to get used to smaller cars), but i still couldn't help but laugh when someone showed me a car with a v-4 engine. in the 80's, gallagher (a US commedian) talked about those wimpy imports, saying, "you could have had a v8!"
v8s are kind of rare now (ford/lincoln still uses them for their largest models, but that's about it), but i'm pretty sure they were still around in the mid-90's.
anyway, rental companies around here have different classes, based on car size. the range goes something like this, though the details vary a bit from company to company. from smallest & cheapest:
compact
mid-size
standard
full-size
premium/luxury
and then there are minivans and SUVs, which have their own pricing.
on the surface, you're asking about a compact, but the trick is that if you rent a compact, you know you're getting one. you've chosen to go for a tiny little clown car because you wanted to save the extra couple of bucks it would take to go up a class or two (or maybe because you actually care about the extra few miles per gallon).
otoh, if you get a standard or mid-size, you'll still get a fairly small, cheap, import. if you go up from mid-size to standard, you'll get a few frills and a slightly larger trunk.
those are the cars you'll complain about. mom and i tried getting a mid-size a while back. don't remember the exact model we got, but we didn't have much confidence in the engine, there were no power seats, no power windows... heck, not even power mirrors. we laughed at the thing, but ultimately ended up taking it back in because the brakes seemed to be acting funny. when we did, we found out that we could get a
real car for about 5 dollars more. so, that was the end of that.
what's more, there's that bit of a shock you get when you ask for a mid-size or standard car, and find out that you're getting this dinky little thing. when you hear "standard" car, you think of something a bit more like what you get for "full size" because that's about the middle of the market when you're looking to
buy a car. the rental agencies, looking to keep costs down, basically bump everything down a notch.
anyway, you can see a bit more of what i'm talking about by checking out the webpages of some of the rental companies. for example, here's the listing of avialable cars at
enterprise. unfortunately, they're only listing american cars as their examples.
looking around at a few other websites, most of the companies seem to want to list the american models as their examples for the classes. they have imports, but i guess they don't want to put that image first.
looking at
nissan\'s US vehicle lineup it seems that the sentra is their smallest US car. you might want to consider an altima, tho, at a higher rental class. "we paid for a standard, and we got
this?" up to you.
sorry i can't help more. the right names just aren't coming to mind.
Paul
