2023 Nissan Kicks Sr Review and Test Drive! The Ultimate Urban Adventure Machine!

Welcome to another video here guys. My name is Christopher. This is Cars Unlocked. Today we're with the 2023 Nissan Kicks. This is the SR Premium, the perfect little entry-level SUV. We're going to go through the ins and outs to help you determine if this is the right car for you. So in 2018, the Kicks arrived here in North America. This one being the 2023, it doesn't see too many changes from the 2022 model. Actually zero changes. This one has the SR Premium package, so it is the top model and with an MSRP of $25,978. We're going to go through what you get and then this one being the premium, you have a $900 premium package. So let's go through the ins and outs. You can remote start this car right from the distance using the key fob here. You just click and hold the remote start button and then it's going to start it up. Perfect on a day like today where it's a little chilly and you can warm the car up before you get in. Let's jump on the inside here. Like I said, with this premium package you get this leather seat. It's a two-tone gray and black seat with the orange stitching. So really sporty, easy to keep clean and then that orange stitching really continues all throughout the vehicle. You have a push button start under the hood. This one's a 1.6 four-cylinder engine with a CVT transmission. It's going to give you about 122 horsepower and 114 pounds feet of torque. So it's not going to go crazy fast or accelerate like super quickly. It's more of a gradual acceleration, but the benefit that you get is the fuel economy here with this Kicks. It's great in the city. It has a combined fuel economy rating, 7.2 liters per every 100 kilometers or about 35 mpg combined between highway and city. So really good fuel economy. You sacrifice a little acceleration for the fuel economy, but there's also a sport mode. You can put it in sport mode if you do want that acceleration. You can put it in sport mode and get a little more pickup. So what do you get for that $900? Well for an entry-level vehicle, this one certainly comes with a lot of features. With that $900, you get the LED signature headlights, the LED fog lights, which are down below here. You get an auto dimming rear view mirror, and then you get these black painted roof rails as well. On the inside, there's also the leather seating. So for $900, there's certainly a ton of value here. On the wheel, you get this flattened out bottom wheel here. I like the D-shaped wheel. It gives you a lot more space for your knees, and it is a telescopic wheel, manual adjusted. It is a heated steering wheel, which is nice. Again, perfect for a daylight today. Headlights are automatic, and then you have your intelligent cruise control adjustment right on the wheel. So when you're using the cruise control, it uses the sensor there to keep you a safe distance from the car in front of you, and will automatically adjust your speed for you. Another thing you get is this digital information screen. So everything is kind of digital on here from your tachometer, your kilometers to empty, shows a lot of info. You can track your miles, do your fuel economy, and you can adjust any of those driver assistance settings you can turn on and off, like your lane departure warning it has, blind spot monitor it will have, your emergency braking, your parking aids, and your driver attention alert. Everything can be turned off and customized to use the ones that you like, and shut off the ones that you don't like. Oh, I definitely feel the wheel coming on. The heated wheel warms up very, very quick. It's still snowing right now here, almost end of April, and it's snowing right now. So the heated wheel is key. I mentioned that. Checking out the front end of the Kicks here. Now, you can see how they kind of changed the style here in 2021. They added this larger V-motion grille here. Our Nissan emblem is flattened out, and that's going to be flattened out for your Ford emergency sensors. So it has a sensor there, and it has a sensor here. So it does have the forward emergency brake, which is going to help you stop a lot quicker in emergencies. So this one comes with the Bose audio personal speaker that comes in the top model of these Kicks. It sounds phenomenal, and you can adjust it here, but what do we got on here? Nice. We're at it with the devil. Really neat, adds a nice little dynamic to your sound. A few complaints about the Kicks. A, you only get it in automatic. There's no manual. It'd be nice to see a manual transmission in the Kicks. If you're a power seat person, you have to have a power seat. All the trim packages from the lower one to this top one is going to only come with a manual adjusted seat. So it's a six-way manual adjustable seat. And same with sunroof. If you're a sunroof person, you're one of those people who say, I have to have a sunroof. There's no sunroof in the Kicks. You have to go up to something like the Nissan Qashqai. This SR package also comes with these blacked out 17-inch aluminum alloy rims. You have front and rear disc brakes as well. And it's just a little different and more sporty than the lower packages that just come with the silver rims. Rumor has it that Nissan's making an all-wheel drive version in 2024. So I'm pretty excited for that. Also, some people say to me like, hey, I have to have all-wheel drive. And if you have to have all-wheel drive, the Kicks isn't for you. But a good set of snow tires goes a long way. Like this car is great in the snow. We did a full snow test that I posted on my channel, testing the Nissan Kicks in the snow. And if you were curious of how it handles in the snow, then you can check that video out. I'll link it in the description. Checking out the kicks here, you can see how this tail light flows all the way across the trunk, which I really like, gives it a sporty feel. And you see the high ground clearance on this. So it's really good in the snow for these smaller compact SUVs. You have rear parking sensors and you have a rear backup camera as well. It also has the moving object detection and the pedestrian alert here. So it will help just like the front, it'll help you stop in an emergency. Here's the space in the back seat. Now I've adjusted this seat to fit how I'm driving. I'm 5'9", so there is quite a bit of room. There's two USBs, cup holders in each door and that orange stitching continues throughout. So again, this isn't for like a family of five, probably a family of four would be very comfortable in here. But there is quite a lot of room in the back seat. Overall, like this car, if you do a lot of city driving, you don't drive a lot on the highway, you do a lot of city driving, you know, it's a good little puddle jumper to zip in and out of. You like to go out and do things on the weekend. You have that lots of trunk space. You like to plug your phone in and listen to your music or your podcast. It has like the Apple CarPlay and the Android Auto that shows up right on this 8-inch touchscreen here. That's where this car is really going to appeal to someone. If you like to do those type of things, this car is going to be very appealing to you. Great on gas, easy to park. It has a 360 camera and a round view monitor in this SL package and it has a ton of safety features. Like for a $25,000 sedan, you get all the Nissan safety features. So here's why you'd go with something like the Kicks versus a regular sedan like our Nissan Sentra. So much more trunk space. You have 25 cubic feet of trunk space. This is removable. This is a little tunnel cover. Comes with the carpeted mats as well and then you can fold the seats down. You know, if you do the IKEA thing, what we like to say on Cars Unlocked here is a couple dead bodies. You could probably stack maybe four dead bodies in here and if you fold the seats down, you can probably throw in two more. So there's lots of space in the trunk and it is a lot higher trunk as well. So really that's kind of your run through of the Nissan Kicks. If you guys have any questions, do not hesitate to comment. Put them in the comments below. Let us know what you think. If you learned something here today, like and subscribe. Check out our other videos of the different trim levels and we'll see you in the next one. Have a great day. Cars Unlocked signing out.