Video: 2025 Nissan Kicks: Affordable Aesthetics

There ain't nothing cheap about it, but it sure is affordable because at a starting price of just around $23,000, you won't feel like you paid for a penalty box. Let's kick it around (laughing goofily). Woo! (bright music) A lot of things have changed, so here's a really quick primer on where the new Kicks falls in Nissan's lineup. Gone is the prior compact Rogue Sport and the last generation subcompact Kicks. Where there were two, there is now one, as this is Nissan's smallest and most affordable crossover beneath the significantly larger Rogue. There are two major new aspects for the new Kicks. The first being is generally bigger in size than it was before. That is because it is more or less a segment up in size larger than it was before, and, for the first time, you can add all-wheel drive depending on trim if you so wish. It's also tremendously big on style relative to both price and segment. Now keep in mind this example here is a loaded out SR trim, so it's fitted with all the jewelry and stylistic candy, like this big old red roof, to capture most attention at launch. But at around $28,000 for the front-wheel drive SR, a decent chunk of buyers might spring for the trim's bright red axons and blocky wheels. I would, but given that affordability is one of the most defining features of the Kicks, it is important to me to look past all this glitz and glamour of the SR trim and determine two important things. One, what are some of the most defining features that are available on the lowest, most base standard of Kicks, that being the S trim, and where do I think the sweetest spot in the lineup is for your hard-earned dollars? To figure out what's standard, we are gonna have to start with the interior, which is also all new. Again, keep in mind that a fair portion of the color accents you see here are gonna be specific to the SR, like this cool red trim on the center console and all the red stitching you see spread out throughout the cabin. Now I'm just gonna pick out the standard standout features on the basis of base S trim as I'm not gonna go over all the stuff that you would expect and you will get on any modern stripped out car in 2024, including stuff like power windows, automatic headlights, folding mirrors. All that stuff is all on every Kicks that you can buy. Unfortunately, you're not gonna get the SR's sweet dual 12.3-inch displays as standard on the base S, but even the most bare-bone Kicks is gonna have a seven-inch driver display and a seven-inch center infotainment display. That's not bad. Well, I thought there'd be more, but you really do need to step up to the next and middle SV trim to get into the goodies. For just 1,850 extra, the SV's gonna add two USB-C ports up front for charging and for connectivity. You got this 12.3 inch infotainment display in the center, and you get wireless charging. Crucially, this is also how you're gonna get Wireless Apple CarPlan, Android Auto, both of which are entirely not available on the base trim, even in wired form. Though I haven't driven it yet, and I haven't even spent any time in it yet, I do think that the SV is the one to get if you are trying to maximize your dollar spent, and that's just based on what I've seen on paper with the standard features and based on this cool SR trim here. But you're gonna have to drive it first, and that's exactly what I'm gonna do with the fancy-schmancy SR right here. So how does the all new 2025 Nissan Kicks drive? Come on, y'all. Y'all know how this drives. If you've driven any entrant in the popular subcompact crossover segment in the past five, or more, could be six, seven years, they all drive more or less the same, and that is not a dig at any of them, including the Kicks. They all, for the most part, have similar platforms. They're all front-wheel drives. Some of them are all-wheel drive, like the Kicks. They all have buzzy, relatively low-powered four-cylinder powertrains, and a lot of 'em have CVTs, some of them have standard transmissions, but all of them generally drive, stop, steer, and accelerate more or less the same. Specifically the Kicks drives pretty nice and offensive steering is light. Got a little bit of feel, a little bit of weight to it, but overall, it's pretty artificial. That's fine. Brakes are fine. They engage all right. I mean, again, it's not gonna blow you away dynamically 'cause that's not the point of the vehicle. I will say, this two-liter naturally-aspirated four-cylinder is larger than the 1.6-liter naturally-aspirated four-cylinder found in the previous Kicks. It has 140 horsepower, 141 pounds-feet of torque, enough to allow merging on the highway in a safe manner. It's not gonna be very exciting, and I will say, if you load this thing up with friends, family, dogs, kayaks, bikes, pets, all sorts of stuff, it's gonna be kinda, it's gonna weigh it down a bit, and it's gonna be noticeably slow getting on the highway. Just it's not something that's not a deal breaker at all. All the cars in this segment are gonna have that characteristic. It's just something you need to keep in mind when you're shopping. At this upper trim level, Nissan has done quite a good job of hiding the fact that this is ultimately a budget vehicle, but one of the things that always tells the truth is when you really step on the throttle, you really get trying to merge in the highway aggressively, Even in the upper trim levels on all cars in this segment, you're gonna get a whole lot of buzz and thrash and nash from the powertrain. It's gonna really come into the cabin. And Nissan did increase the amount of sound deadening that is in the car, but really, if you're really getting on the throttle to get on the highway, it can get pretty loud in here. It can get pretty buzzy, especially with Nissan's familiar continuously variable transmission. It does feel a little budget, as it were, merging situations, but overall, I will say, during day-to-day operation, we're here in kind of a parking lot, we're in low-speed situation in the city, it's pretty quiet. A little bit more on that CVT. You know what to expect if you've driven any CVT Nissan in the past, especially those with naturally-aspirated four-cylinders, which honestly is most Nissan crossovers, there's a little bit of the rubber bandy effect. Personally, I actually drive a vehicle equipped with the CVT every day as my daily driver, and it doesn't really bother me. You gotta get used to it. It is a bit of a sea change if you go from a normal traditional automatic. You just gotta get used to the rubber band effect, where it kinda jumps in. For the most part, it's all right. Just around town, calm, no problems, no complaints, smooth shifting transmission. Ride quality is mostly pretty impressive. Nissan says this is on an all-new platforms debuting with the Kicks and really no complaints. Body motions are well managed. There's not much crashiness. it doesn't feel too stiff, doesn't feel too soft. It's just got a little bit of a Goldilocks situation. The best I can say is you're really not gonna notice the ride quality, and that's totally fine in this segment. The key idea here when driving the Kicks is it doesn't feel like a penalty box. It doesn't feel cheap. There's that word again. It feels substantive. It feels like you're getting your money's worth. On the subject of interior, I think they've done quite a good job on the Kicks. Again, I'm gonna say it for the millionth time, this is the top trim level, so you're gonna get all the cool stuff. For the most part, I'm looking here. I really do like these dual 12.3-inch displays. This is also how you get CarPlay, at least in the middle trim and up. So you've got the Wireless CarPlay, Android Auto. I've got wireless charging down there, and if that wasn't enough, I've got two USB slots. Not bad. I've also got Nissan's mostly-full suite of safety technology and driver assistance. That's pretty great. You've also got, check this out, whoa, a panoramic... I mean, it's does stop in the middle there, and you go back a little bit. But even your rear passengers, if you have any riding back there with, you can enjoy a little bit of the sun. One of the more interesting aspects of the interior that I think might be specific to the SR or potentially optional on the middle SV trim is that when you move away from the manual climate controls of the base and the middle model, or you just get the automatic climate control setup that is on the SR, they replace the, like I said, the manual rotary knobs, they replace them with a touch capacitive panel, which works totally fine. It's not that visually amazing to look at, other than kind of a glossy buttonless touch front panel, but it works fine enough. It's lit well enough, and it adds a bit of maturity to the interior, I would say. The higher up in the range you go, you are gonna get a little bit more, I would say, a performance flare or kinda flavor on the styling. It doesn't matter which trim you get, they're gonna be the same powertrain across the board, so the same amount of power, the same amount of performance, the same amount of handling and all that good stuff, but on the SR, reasonably sporty in here, spicy-ish. You've got this faux carbon fiber texture for the soft touch leather or leatherette surfaces here. These seats have a bunch of just like red piping in them and red stitching. The steering wheel is reasonably kind of aggressive with red stitching. That's kind of nice, but again, this is all just flavor. There's no extra performance here. Nissan is making a lot of ballyhoo about these being their trademark zero-gravity or zero-G seats, their zero-G seat tech You're not really gonna notice any difference. Sorry, Nissan. I never have even. Whenever they put it or pointed it out in one of their products, I just never really noticed any kind of significant difference over, say, just (chuckling) a standard cloth seat. Again, I'd have to do back-to-back testing here and sitting in multiple cars to really determine if it is any more or less comfortable, but for the most part, it just feels like a perfectly serviceable cloth seat. One of the headline features, no pun intended there at all, I promise, is the Bose Personal Plus speakers embedded in the headrest, which you can see here. I tested it earlier by playing some of my current favorite songs, which has to be, which I know that Charli said Brat summer's officially over. Not for me. Had to listen to one of my favorite albums of the summer. Had to plug that on this awesome Bose headset embedded thing here. Pretty good. Hyper pop has never sounded so good, I'll tell you that. Now regardless of what music is playing or whatever music you pick, what this system does do is add some very interesting spatiality to the mix. I am quite vocal about how I'm not a person that you should trust on premium sound systems in vehicles. I don't really have the ear for it. To be honest with you, I need a comparison of jumping in back-to-back vehicles to really tell a difference whenever these automakers present these large multi-speaker systems. This one, though, is directly observable, and I really do like that. Like I said, it kind of doesn't bounce the sound around, but it does provide a meaningful surround sound experience more so than you'll get with just differently positioned speakers since it is right next to your ears. So it's got style, it's definitely got substance, and it's pretty cheap. Well, eh, very affordable. I do think that those buyers who are interested in this segment, and of which there are quite a few, are gonna have a very hard time passing up the 2025 Nissan Kicks' very distinctive style. For my full thoughts and review, you gotta go to cars.com/news. (bright music)