2025 Nissan Kicks First Drive: Growing Up
• Auto123 gets in a first drive of the 2025 Nissan Kicks.
Santa Barbara, CA - Our first opportunity to drive the almost-all-new 2025 Kicks might have taken place in the U.S., but the fact remains that the small SUV is much more important for Nissan Canada than it is for its American counterpart. So the arrival of all-wheel drive makes sense and instantly becomes a big selling point for the Japanese automaker here. But that’s not the only change come to the littlest SUV in the brand’s lineup.
2025 Nissan Kicks – What’s new?
Besides power now coming to all four wheels (front-wheel drive is still the default configuration on the lower models), the Kicks has – shockingly – grown in size, but there’s a good reason here in that with the larger sub-compact-+ Qashqai gone from the North American lineup, the Kicks now fills that role, sitting as the entry-level SUV just below the Rogue compact SUV.
Beyond that, styling is updated, the architecture is updated, tech is updated, the powertrain and its output are updated, the interior is updated. It’s a festival of updated-ness. More specifically:
Design of the 2025 Nissan Kicks - 8.0/10
This is a bigger and more confident-looking Kicks we were given to drive in beautiful southern California. The new model is longer, taller and wider than before, and it has more ground clearance (by 214.2 mm) to give it more of a presence on the road and more confidence off it (a little).
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