First up, let’s clear the room of the obvious elephant: you pronounce it “cash-kye”. Not “kwosh-key”. Not “kwaz-kay”. Nor, for that matter, “kumquat”. The Nissan “cash-kye”. Good. That’s that dealt with.

As for the question of why you pronounce it “cash-kye”, or, indeed, why a perfectly sensible Japanese car company, operating out of Europe, would name a very serviceable family car after a nomadic tribe from southwestern Iran, thus inadvertently making the product sound like an orange-flavoured drink sold in cinema chains . . . well, those elephants will just have to remain with us, tossing their heads and trumpeting I’m afraid, because I don’t have the first clue.

What I do know is that the name isn’t putting people off. Not long ago Nissan was able to announce that the “cash-kye” had blasted into the UK Top Ten at No 9, marginally ahead of the Vauxhall Insignia and right on the tail of the Ford Mondeo, although still some way behind Take That at No 1.

This suggests, at the very least, that quite a lot of British drivers don’t remotely mind having a car whose name they can’t use. Because, even if you know how to pronounce “cash-kye”, it can’t follow, surely, by any stretch, that you are ever going to say “cash-kye”. “I’ll drop by around 7.30 and pick you up in the cash-kye.” It is beyond the limits of human expression to make that sentence ring with conviction.

It was 2007 when Nissan first bundled an SUV with a hatchback and called it a “cash-kye”. There soon followed the Qashqai +2, which has pull-up seats in the boot and thus holds seven people, provided that at least two of them are diminutive and uncomplaining. This version was recently sent out again in an “n-tec” model — less like a hatchback than ever, with 18in alloys, satin-finish roof rails, a panoramic glass roof, sat-nav, a reversing camera, etc.

The plain, chart-busting, five-seater “cash-kye” was just plausibly an SUV that you could own without getting sworn at or deliberately rear-ended at junctions.

The +2, however, is longer and taller and has enough bulk and attitude about it to volunteer it for a significant part in any forthcoming land war, so if this is an SUV in “compact” disguise then the disguise is a pair of plastic glasses and a stick-on moustache.

Still, even in its sturdier, swollen form, it requires no arm-wrestling on the part of its driver, and it can sweep round urban corners without briefly occupying the pavement on the other side of the road, which is always a bit of a boon with cars on this scale. Plus all those fancy new gubbins do seem neat and nicely made. What’s in a name? Absolutely nothing, it turns out.

Nissan Qashqai +2 1.5 DCI n-tec

Price £20,200

Top speed 106mph

Acceleration 0-62mph in 13.3 sec

Average consumption 49.6mpg

CO2 emissions 149 g/km

Rating: 3 star

“Nissan’s toe-tapping chart smash gets a dance remix feat. roof rails”