2021 Nissan Qashqai review: trend-setting crossover is back in the game

Cast your mind back, if you can, to mid-2006. Baddiel and Skinner were in the charts, people were wondering what this new Twitter thing was all about, Fernando Alonso was on his way to his second F1 world championship and nobody had a clue what a “crossover” car was. If someone said the word Qashqai to you, you’d probably have offered them a tissue.

Fast forward six months to the start of 2007 and Nissan had unleashed its newest creation on the world, introducing the Qashqai as a C-segment crossover that claimed to offer the practicality of an SUV and the efficiency of a hatchback.

With a weird name and weird looks, no-one was quite sure how the world would receive this completely new model and Nissan started out with relatively modest sales projections. Within months it had to add an extra production shift at its Sunderland plant to keep up with demand and since then the Qashqai has sold more than five million units around the world.

Take a look around any suburban street or supermarket car park and you’re bound to spot at least a couple of Qashqais. It’s been the UK’s best-selling crossover every year since 2007 and regularly features in the list of the country’s top 10 sellers.

Nissan claims to have invented the crossover segment and while there are historical oddities that might loosely be called a crossover, the Qashqai certainly set the trend for the last decade and a half.

From being in a segment of one in 2007, the Qashqai now has 30 competitors in the C-segment.