When I say bare essentials, I mean the 5-speed manual tranny, four wheels, and three pedals. The '1.6 BASE' trim's ignobility also reveals manual locks, hand-crank windows and no air conditioning to speak of. The '1.6' model is slightly more dignified, arriving with standard A/C and an available 4-speed automatic.

What's the upside? According to Nissan, 107-hp 1.6-liter 4-banger boosts highway fuel efficiency by 2-4 mpg, when compared to Versa hatchback's larger 1.8-liter (oddly, city MPGs are the same which may be attributed to the base model's lack of the frugal CVT transmission). Yet the biggest gain comes in a form of dollars and cents. The 1.6 BASE Versa is listed at just $9,990 MSRP. That makes it the least expensive Japanese car available and perhaps the cheapest passenger vehicle on sale in America.