Entry · Wednesday, August 12, 2026
Nissan Figaro
/NEE-sahn fig-AH-roh/ n.- 1. A Japanese kei-class convertible produced by Nissan in 1991, styled in deliberate retro-European idiom, whose rear quarter panels billow outward with a generosity wholly disproportionate to the vehicle's overall footprint; esp. one parked canalside, where the rear haunches have an audience on both banks.
- 2. colloq. Pocket-sized in the front, committed in the back. What a Fiat 500 would look like if it had been raised on a more encouraging diet.
"She parked a powder-blue Nissan Figaro outside the cheese shop and the cobblestones visibly reconsidered their geometry. The rear haunches, viewed from the canal side, were doing the most."
From Figaro, the scheming valet of Beaumarchais's Le Mariage de Figaro (1784), a character celebrated for charm, wit, and getting into tight spaces with outsized confidence. Nissan applied the name in 1991 to a limited-run retro coupe that, by all accounts, shares these qualities, particularly the last one.
Filed by
The rear quarter panels billow outward on a car that has absolutely no business being this generous with itself.
Ruling ADMITTED, WITH A FOOTNOTE
The panels billow. The canal doubles it. Two documented instances of the same evidence is not repetition. It is corroboration.
In the margin
A car named for a man celebrated for getting into tight spaces with outsized confidence parked outside a cheese shop is a complete sentence.
The cobblestones reconsidered their geometry. This is noted and will not be verified.