Photography: Nissan Figaro – Back to the future

You may wonder why this title, it isn’t here just to take up space, and make the title look more nice, but we’ll get to that later. This little car is a Nissan, yes it’s an ancestor of all of that cool cars that Nissan makes. It won’t do the Nurburgring in 7minutes 27.56 seconds even if it was flown around the track. But it will still make other people stop, pause and look at it.

The Figaro was introduced at the 1989 Tokyo Motor Show under the slogan “Back to the Future”. It was built by a Nissan special projects group called Pike Factory, who also produced other niche automobiles such as the Be-1, Pao and S-Cargo. It was based on the K10 Nissan Micra aka March. Only four colors were available: Topaz Mist, Emerald Green, Pale Aqua and Lapis Grey. Each color symbolized a season of the year. When the car was launched, topaz mist was the least popular colour. There were only 2,000 produced in Topaz mist hence they have become increasingly rare.

The Figaro was equipped with leather seats, air conditioning, CD player and a open roof. It was designed by Shoji Takahashi, who won a design competition with the car. One of the special things around this car was its engine. The engine was a Nissan’s MA10ET, a turbocharged 1.0 L (987 cc) I4. Something we don’t really see everyday.

Only 8,000 were originally available with an additional 12,000 added to production numbers to meet demand. Prospective purchasers had to enter a lottery to be able to buy one of these cars. Limited edition cars came with passenger side baskets and cup holders. These now fetch hundreds on internet auction sites. This little car is know being imported in Europe and the US by many retro car enthusiasts, and we can all understand why really. One piece of automotive history, that may not be well known to the general public, but it’s still a really cool car.

When I came across the photos of this extraordinary little car, I said to myself, we just had to show them to our readers. So I contacted the photoghrapher, in an optimistic view that he could let us show them to you, and he did! So we must thank Sebastian Rathu (the author of the photographs) and the Finnish Exotic Street Vehicles company which imported this car to Finland some time ago. Here are the photographs, so enjoy …

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