AFTER years of trying to woo small sedan buyers with the light-car-based Tiida, Nissan is preparing to do it properly with the long-awaited upcoming Pulsar, while the company expects the cheaper Micra-derived Almera to clean up in the lower end of the market.

However, unlike the vehicle that spawned it, the new Almera has not arrived with headline-making cheap prices or cute-as-a-button styling, while our first drive revealed a couple of surprising packaging flaws that caught us by surprise.