Usually, tall people don’t buy mini cars because they don’t have enough space. Even if they like the car. So Nissan decided to offer everyone a small car that can fit anyone: the new generation Micra. And they even made some studies to support their decision.
Europeans are getting taller, with the Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries now officially among the biggest in the world. The average Dutch man today is 182.5 cm – exactly six feet tall. But not everyone is so ‘elevated’, as an average woman from Greece is only 160cm.
Such diversity presented a challenge to Nissan engineers developing the new Micra. Not only did they have to create a comfortable interior, but also allow them to fit in a supermini with an exterior length of only 3,999 mm.
Lee Griggs, Senior Engineer for Human Engineering, NTCE, explained: “It’s a very simple idea. We select NTCE colleagues of various sizes and take 40 different measurements from each of them, recording everything from height and sitting eye position to arm and leg length.”
Lee added: “It means we always have at least 200 real people we can call on at short notice to validate our latest ideas or changes. Of course, we have internal standards to work to, but real-world human feedback is every bit as vital.”
With the tallest NTCE employee being 200 cm (6 ft 7 ins) and the smallest being 152 cm (4 ft 11 ins), it’s a wide-ranging line-up that proved useful in creating the Micra’s interior.
