This is it. This is The Road. This is seven miles of soaring, serpentine sensuousness that will scorch me from my slumber, censure my senses and shakedown my steed with a smooth and semi-sexual series of esses. It will also take me to Kettering. This will be distilled driving pleasure boiled down to its basics as if it were the key Tarmac ingredient in Heston Blumenthal’s kitchen. Let’s do this thing.
To give this delicious ribbon of main course its just desserts I’m here in a small but perfectly formed piece of weaponry. As it tears a tiny hole in the bumptious belly of the East Midlands’ afternoon there are no stray pixels on this picture. Only a Pixo. That’s right; I’m pedalling the Pixo, Nissan’s newly minted baby that’s got its laser sights trained on the Aygo and is about to give it a bloody nose.
As The Road unfolds before me the little Nissan seems to take on a sense of animal urgency, all three cylinders singing the same sweet song, and that song says “You are in control”. Performance is metered out like whiskey at an Irish wedding; smooth but punchy and in intoxicating quantities. And that’s a party the gearchange wants to be at, dancing across the gate like a petrified snake.
But the real happy couple here is the ride & handling. When the twisted Tarmac asks yet more questions of them, the answer is always ‘I do’. Bumps are soaked up by the mechanical thirst pockets atop each wheel whilst grip is so plentiful you could sell the excess to a leech factory. Power in to each corner, trim your tack with the telepathic steering and then let loafer unleash lovely justice upon the throttle and power on to the next date with destiny and an old friend we call Mr Corner.
As car and helmsman forge a deeper bond I delve further into the box of tricks marked ‘dynamic excellence’, lifting off the throttle mid-bend to see what secrets this will reveal. All at once the tail stepped wide, I caught it with a dab of oppo and I was away.
The Nissan Pixo 1.0 Tekna is a bitch. And I spanked it.
Troy Queef is Executive Associate Editor-At-Large for DAB OF OPPO magazine
