In olden days, Nissan made quite a name for itself building medium-sized hatchbacks called Sunny and Almera (and, in non-UK markets, Pulsar). However, by ten years ago it seemed that it had forgotten how to do this properly.
The last Almera, which wasn't very good, was unobtrusively removed out of the British market in 2006. At about the same time, Nissan launched the Qashqai, now easily the most successful crossover sold in this country, and for a while there was no more talk of medium-sized hatchbacks.
That lasted until 2014, when Nissan introduced a new model here, using the Pulsar name for the first time. It's up against hefty opposition in the form of the Ford Focus and Volkswagen Golf (respectively the second most popular car in the UK and the most popular overall in all of Europe) and it will find it very difficult to do significant damage to the sales of either.
It's less adventurous than the class leaders and has a less "premium" feel than either of them, but it has its plus points. One is that its exterior design is quite sharp, spoiled only by a rear window layout which does provide as much visibility as you’d hope. However, its design is no worse than that of main rivals like the Focus or Golf, or even the Renault Megane or Vauxhall Astra.
The Pulsar's outstanding feature is the amount of space it has for rear passengers. Japanese manufacturers in general are very good at providing this, and here Nissan has done a class-leading job. Not at the expense of luggage space, either. The Pulsar has a 385-litre boot, which is slightly more than can be said for the Focus or Golf. If your main priority is transporting four large adults (which it probably isn't, but say it was) the Pulsar has to be your first choice in this category.
It's roomy enough up front, too, though I can't sit quite far enough away from the pedals to be able to change gear as smoothly as I'd like. But I'm quite unreasonably tall, and more sensibly shaped people probably won't have this problem.
There's a tendency for manufacturers to offer journalists very high-spec models loaded with optional extras. Three cheers to Nissan for taking the opposite route and supplying us with the humblest Pulsar of all for this test. Its list price is £15,995, which makes it cheaper than every Golf and all but one Focus.
For that you get a 114bhp 1.2-litre turbo petrol engine, a six-speed manual gearbox and the most basic trim level which (for no reason I've ever been able to find out) is called Visia. The engine feels, as it's supposed to, like a naturally-aspirated 1.6, and the only indication that something less conventional lies under the bonnet is a gentle sigh when you lift off the throttle and the turbo goes off-boost.
The downsizing and turbocharging are, as has become quite common in the industry, an attempt to boost official fuel economy (in this case to 56.5mpg) and lower CO2 levels (117g/km) to reduce Vehicle Excise Duty (£30 from year two onwards) and make the car seem a more attractive purchase.
This works because the EU test requires such gentle acceleration that the turbo hardly needs to do anything at all. In the real world it does, and my fuel economy was in the low 40s after a few hundred miles of mostly moderate driving.
There's little temptation to push any harder than this. It's difficult to fault the Pulsar's poise on very smooth surfaces, but this one, in contrast to others I drove on last year's UK press launch, gave up far too easily when it encountered any road that could not have doubled as a snooker table.
Bouncing from one bump to another on various country lanes, A-roads and motorways, I had wry thoughts about the fact that this car is named after a vigorously oscillating object.
The interior design and is unexciting but the layout of the controls is at least easy to manage. The Pulsar is not exciting. In fact, apart from the looks and practicality, it's rather boring. But there is, and always has been, a market for boring family cars, many of which have been very successful. I'd rather have a Golf, but I wouldn't mind having a Pulsar, as long as it had better ride quality than this particular one.