Test drive Nissan Patrol LWB 1998 - 2004 SUV
Nissan Patrol Gr-Grand Raider
Gray hair in a beard, demon - in the rib - this is about him, about Nissan Patrol Gr. Not so long ago, the old man celebrated his fifty anniversary, and then he suddenly decided to demonstrate an excellent physical shape and slightly lift luxury SUVs. And for this purpose, one of the most powerful and voluminous engines in its class received a 4.8 -liter in -line six with a capacity of 245 horsepower under the hood ...
Fifty years is not age. And the Nissan Patrol GR is a lively confirmation that a successful machine, even without revolutionary changes in the design, can last in production for a very long time. Judge for yourself: in fifty years, the design has changed radically, the engine was stepped far ahead, the electronics increased significantly, and the patrol remained practically the way the first customers knew it. The car is still based on a powerful spar frame, pendants - dependent both in front and from behind, there is always a full -wheel drive transmission, a distribution box and blocking differentials. In general, everything is reliable and stable.
Just do not think that the Nissanists, like Ulyanovsk engineers, are trying to slip out obsolete equipment in a new body to the consumer. On the contrary: having preserved the general concept of the car, during the years of production of numerous generations Patrol, Nissan experts brought its design to perfection. The pendants, although they remained dependent, now, as an elastic element, not a condo spring is used, but a more sensitive and soft spring. The all -wheel drive transmission also underwent significant changes: the front bridge is now connected directly on the go and without any manipulations with hub locks. With motors - the same thing. If earlier Nissan preferred to install mainly painful atmospheric diesel engines of a huge working volume on SUVs, now even a 4.8-liter six of 245 horses can be found under the hood of a new patrol.
Over time, not only the appearance of the car changed, but also its essence. No, he remained a real rogue, but from generation to generation became more comfortable and luxurious. If the first, fifty years ago, the Nissan Patrol was an analogue of an ascetic army all -terrain vehicle, with the corresponding level of comfort, then each subsequent generation was an order of magnitude exceeded the predecessor in all respects. The car increased in size, became more spacious and powerful, acquired all with new options, was overgrown with electronics and auxiliary devices, but constructively remained a real all-terrain vehicle. That is, cross -country ability, reliability in extreme conditions and maximum safety margins were basic for the designers, and even the comfort and smoothness of the move were secondary requirements. Although, if possible, of course, the designers tried to combine all positive qualities in the car.
Not at ease
Why do you put this fool? - This is not a fool, this is a horse. (Masyanya, New Year)
The purpose of Nissan Patrol does not have to guess for a long time: with all its appearance, the car demonstrates that its elements are impassable jungle, unsteady sands, viscous swamps and very, very broken ground roads. In principle, it was for off -road that the car was created. The patrol is bought by those who travel a lot in difficult conditions and are very rarely chosen on asphalt. You can see Nissan Patrol wherever the rest of the SUVs will not pass - in the desert, in the mountains, etc. But you need to ride everywhere, not only in the mountains, so having barely received a 4.8-liter Nissan Patrol GR in our hands, we went to where the creators of this rogue would like to see it the least-to a wide asphalt platform. On the off -road, no doubt, he is a king, but we were interested in how a huge SUV with addicted pendants and an impressive clearance in high -speed turns, driven drifts, etc. would behave.
First of all, they tried emergency braking - to know what to count on in case of something. On the speedometer - 80 km/h, the steering wheel is straight, the blow to the brake pedal. The car, of course, stopped, but a little further than expected - the braking distance was almost half more than in the case of a car or a parquet SUV. The brake system at the same time works for five points: a slight effort on the pedals, very high information content, but there are no miracles, so it is instantly impossible to stop two tons of iron. Clearly, the first warning is not hanging behind cars, otherwise you will rake a couple of pieces in front of you with emergency braking.
We go further - the second for the test program was a snake. I won’t even tell you about the rolls on the turns: technically savvy readers could predict the result after familiarizing themselves with the constructive features of the car, and everyone else can see this show in the photo. True, I have to disappoint lovers of sensations: despite the decent rolls, Patrol behaves very stable and reliably in turns. Neither demolitions, nor harsh shies towards the twisted steering wheel .. There is even some kind of driver string: the car is controlled well, and if you want extremely, you can step a little. At high speed, Patrol demonstrates insufficient rotation, lazily and reluctantly tucked the face in a turn. But if in the same turn to go under gas, not in the sense of drunk, but in the sense of acceleration, then even some kind of fan with a slight demolition of the rear axle is possible. But only with a small one: even a 4.8-liter engine cannot afford such luxury as disruption of the rear axle into a slip, so it only responds to frank provocations in Patrol's turns with a barely noticeable demolition of the rear wheels. Although the tires screech with this as expected: juicy, echoing, as if KamAZ is falling to one side. But he behaves, I repeat once again, Nissan Patrol in vihi stably. But it is strongly not recommended to slow down sharply at this moment, otherwise the car will begin to baptize terribly, and it will not seem enough to you. Hence the second warning: you can go to speed into a turn, even interesting, but only if you do not have to sharply slow down or leave the trajectory - in this case, Nissan shows some nervousness.
Reasoned with quite asphalt settings of dependent Patrolevsky pendants, we decided to try the car at high speed. After all, he, according to the technical data, can accelerate to 190 km/h - the limit that is available to far from all SUVs. We left for the Moscow Ring Road, gas to the floor, and wait until three -digit numbers appear on the speedometer. I did not have to wait long: before the cruising 100-120 km/h Patrol 4.8, I accelerated somehow unrealistically and even showed zeal-I wanted to continue acceleration. We will have time, first we will see how we have habits at these speeds. At first glance - normal. The car clearly holds the trajectory, does not require constant steering, and indeed behaves almost like a universal SUV with a front independent suspension. Unless the vibrations of the body are a little annoying: the car is constantly swaying in different directions, without stopping for a second. But it got worse when we moved from a relatively well -groomed ring road to peripheral - on pits and potholes the car began to simply sausage mercilessly. A high center of gravity, huge road clearance, vertical landing - in this case, all this significantly reduces the level of comfort of the riders, forcing them to nod after each bump. Moreover, an increase in speed at the comfort level practically does not affect: the machine still sways on the pits, only a little more or a little less - depending on the speed. So the patrol passengers do not care - 70 km/h on a speedometer or almost two hundred - to relax and dozed it off anyway.
But the driver’s speed is very noticeable, especially on an uneven road. The steering wheel constantly has to be held with two hands, and quite tight. Firstly, because due to its immodest dimensions, the Nissan Patrol constantly seeks to climb into someone else's strip, and it has to be strictly controlled. And secondly, the fluctuations in the car body can lead to the fact that on a large pothole, the driver simply accidentally pumps the steering wheel, and the patrol will again go into someone else's lane. However, there is enough asphalt for today, we went off -road.
Professional OFF-ROD
Well, finally, their native places are the famous quarry in flocks. This is where Nissan Patrol will be able to show himself-after all, a real SUV! Turn on all -wheel drive (one click of the handout lever), let's go. To begin with, we woven along the ground roads, and at about the same speed as they drove along the Moscow Ring Road before. This is quite serious: even on a broken primer, the patrol easily accelerates to 100 km/h, freely jumping through all obstacles and not really thinking before the pit. At first, however, it is scary like that, without slowing down, rush on the potholes: getting used to the passenger car, you are simply afraid to cling to the obstacles of the engine to the engine. But then, having come to taste, it is already difficult to stop - I want even faster. And an unhealthy curiosity comes to the original fear: what obstacle will be insurmountable for Patrol?
It becomes even more interesting when the soil road torn by KAMAZ is replaced by a sand messing career. Around the mountains of sand, huge boulders, blurry ruts of long -abandoned roads. To get stuck here - as there is nothing to do, especially since before our arrival the good rain passed and thoroughly moistened the sand, which we had to ride. But all the more interesting - the conditions are as close as possible to the combat.
On all -wheel drive, even without additional locks, Nissan Patrol very confidently traveled around almost the entire quarry, with the exception of several, especially dead places with deep, loose sand - I had to go back and walk along a harder soil. Once, however, trying to call on the hill, we buried the car quite seriously - it had not yet sat down on the frame, but the wheels were already locked freely, completely without moving the car, but only scattering the soil. We turn on the locking of the rear differential - the turn of the small handle in the lower part of the central console, and the inscription Diff Lock came on on the instrument panel. Now the patrol behaved much more fun: the car no longer only scattered the sand, but also slowly moved away. A couple of times swinging her back and forth, we managed to leave the trap. And what we saw at the scene struck us even more than Nissan Patrol's abilities. The car went out of a rut more than half a meter! If not we did it, we would have thought that here the all -wheel drive military KamAZ skidded.
But even this seemed to us little, I wanted an even more serious Off-Road. We turn around and go down directly to the section where one of the stages of the jeep-trial passes. The last time, if I am not mistaken, the car drove here in the spring. Okay, upgrade the path. But I didn’t have to go far: on a special -storage, which is able to overcome only specially prepared sports SUVs and trucks, Patrol did not resist for a long time. Locker soil instantly took the two -ton carcass of the SUV, and the car stopped. Moreover, she stopped in such a successful place that there was no hope for salvation with the help of a career truck or tractor - he simply could not drive up here. It’s good when there is something to turn on, - I flickered, I remember, then a thought. We turn on the neutral and translate the handout lever to one position back, more precisely, by two. For the first click of the handout, it turned on the neutral gear (I still did not understand why it was needed), and on the second - a lower series of transmissions, simultaneously blocking the center differential. We return the machine to position D and slowly touch the place - in the patrol it seemed to be hung! With a blocked interdose differential, he went as if there was no sand trap. He easily climbed a steep slide, turned right in the middle of a sandy embankment, and then also tried to portray diagonal hanging. With the latter, by the way, there was a problem in general: having stayed in my career for about four hours, I unsuccessfully tried to put the Nissan Patrol in a diagonalist - so that the rear wheel was hanging. Once it turned out almost: having driven the car with the front wheel to a pile of sand, I forced the patrol to raise the leg - the rear right wheel slightly, only a couple of centimeters, came off the ground. But my joy was short -lived: after shooting such a remarkable event, I found out that in the Nissan Patrol, you can still disable the reptile stability stabilizer in the rear suspension - after that it acquires several more additional centimeters of the free stroke, and even in a terrible diagon, the wheel drops to the ground. In general, the diagonalist did not work out ...
What about the motor? - My colleagues asked me upon returning from the test. Indeed, it dawned on me, ”he left all day on one of the most powerful SUVs, and in the test did not say a word about the engine. The motor in this case is indeed the basis of the car - it is it that changes the character of a massive condo SUV to recognition, turning it from a clumsy rogue into a powerful weapon of victory. A herd of two and a half hundred horsepower in combination with a torque of 400 Nm is the main indicator that should be focused on when buying. If the usual, diesel Patrol is a solid SUV that turns into real estate in a dense city stream, then Patrol 4.8 is a hurricane. With his dynamics, he is able to scare not only the neighbors in the stream, but also the driver: the accelerator pedal requires a very delicate relationship. If at idle speeds the machine simply accelerates softly, then pressing it stronger, you get an unexpectedly strong jerk that is completely not characteristic of the SUV. Here the problem is not how to disperse the car, but how to keep it, prevent it from resting at the passenger car moving in front. And this is a completely urgent problem: the visibility in the patrol is such that if the car drove in front is closer than three meters, it is almost not visible - at that moment the driver seems that he had already run into this small -leaf.
Patrol jumps even stronger in a kik downs: the automatic box is climbing two to three steps down, and a real flight begins. The torque of the engine is so scrap that even a two -ton makhina, when switching, sometimes jumps forward sharply. This is especially felt in city modes: the engine works at optimal speeds, and the aerodynamics of the decisive role still does not play, so acceleration is simply amazingly fast. At this moment, even powerful sedans are not able to catch up with Patrol 4.8: the car simply takes off up to 60 km/h, and then the dynamics is quite consistent with the idea of \u200b\u200bhow a powerful SUV should drive. However, the engine is not the only advantage of this machine. A powerful top version differs from others also in that it is equipped with a five -speed automatic with a manual switching function - by the way, a very expensive and rare option so far. And this machine gun is trying to make the engine at any time in the area of \u200b\u200boptimal revolutions. If the machine does not succeed, then you can do it yourself - by swinging the lever to the left, you go into manual mode, where the transfers change by swaying the lever back and forth. True, the manual at Patrol 4.8 turned out to be very peculiar. For example, even if you give the command to the early inclusion of increased gear, it turns on it still does not immediately, but with an almost two -second delay. The engine braking is generally none: the box is very scrupulous about switching down and will never turn on the reduced, if there is at least the slightest opportunity to twist the motor. And this is, in principle, correctly: with such a torque, a sharp braking by the engine is quite capable of blocking the rear wheels even on dry asphalt. But, on the other hand, on the off -road, when all -wheel drive is included, a more active intervention of the machine in the inhibition process would not hurt. However, thank you, if only for the smart box does not jump up when the engine reaches the speed limiter - the automatic transmission stubbornly holds the program that the driver chose.
Real professional
For whom, why and why Nissan Patrol is needed, to guess, I think it is not difficult. A SUV equipped with a powerful 245-horsepower engine and a five-speed automatic transmission with a tiptron is still a professional all-terrain vehicle. And you can’t hide any makeup like a chrome grate of a radiator or leather salon - an off -road entity simply sticks out from this car. Without a doubt, on ordinary roads, Patrol is also quite appropriate, but nothing more - why torture yourself and the car, if there are much more convenient parquet models? The professional all -terrain vehicle differs precisely from the universal that in his tablets about ranks patency and endurance are much higher than confident behavior at high speeds or the information content of the steering in a stressful turn. And this means that only the driver who will operate Nissan Patrol GR in the conditions for which he is intended can fully reveal his talent. And all the others, accustomed to comfortable parkingese workers, will only shrug their shoulders in bewilderment: why do you need such a car?
A source: Autogazet / N 32 (424) dated 09.09.03
