I must get this off my chest before I say anything else about the car. The Nissan Almera Tino has just had too many repairs now, far too many really. There have been a number of things and along the way I've learned not to bother with the dealer and instead to shop around for a local garage that can find cheaper parts and provides cheaper labour. Say what you like about being able to sell your car for more if you always take it to the dealer, but that's meaningless if it costs three times as much to do any repairs!
Ok, repairs... first of all there was some sort of problem with the gear box. My heart sank when I heard about that because I knew that sort of thing is an expensive job, no two ways about it. The dealer wanted something appalling to repair it, something like three thousand. I didn't even really listen to the figure I just blanked it out! I shopped around, asked some friends for recommendations, and found a local garage that were really friendly and nice about it all, told me they could either get a used part or a new one, showed me the price difference, and eventually I got a second hand part that had only done something like 10 thousand miles (I think it was from a broken car), and that's been fine ever since. Anyway the point is that all together cost just under a thousand to repair, still a lot of money but a whole lot less than what the dealer wanted. But since then there have been other problems like the airbag sensors malfunctioning, other little electrical problems, and there must be some sort of leak because it gets through so much oil, which is expensive to replace and also a bit dangerous if you don't know to check how much it's got through.
Apart from all that it also just doesn't feel well put together. I know it's about ten years old now but the doors are really creaky by now and feeling a bit loose, and inside... yes fair enough the kids do tug at things but seriously there's just bits of plastic and carpets hanging off all over the place.
Phew, okay... aside from *all* the repairs, and I'm not sure how to rescue this now, but I can at least say that when it's behaving itself the Almera Tino is a decent car to drive, lots of space, feels reasonably safe, like a nice little bubble, quite straightforward to drive, and it's also very adaptable. I often remove the rear seats to have a little mini-van to transport merchandise around to clients, and it's great for that, feels like a proper workhorse. Day to day the Nissan Almera Tino is very practical, and is fairly reasonable to tax and insure - although this seems to be quite high now compared to some more modern cars that I've been hearing about from family. It is ok all in all but it does haunt me that something else really big is going to go wrong soon, and that's not a nice feeling to have.