Test Drive Nissan Patrol LWB 1998 - 2004 SUV

Nissan Akbar

This car has no Camel Trophy glory, it is not in service with the Bundeswehr and did not win Parishar. In the Western Desert of Egypt, we checked what is capable of Nissan Patrol GR 3.0 DI.
Patrol became famous in a completely different field. For more than two decades, it has been exploited in the hot points of the UN mission, and to submit the conditions in which you have to work, you need to recall the geography of military and humanitarian catastrophes: from Africa to the Caucasus. In the next year, Patrol will celebrate his half-century anniversary, and the case of honor of Nissan considered to release an updated version with an enhanced motor and a changed transmission.
Flew. It is not recommended to eat for drinking water from under the crane such advice I found in a security memo on safety. On the theme of water in the next two days, I read another dozen instructions, including the recommendation of the test drive organizers in the event of a vehicle breakdown in the wilderness, it is especially economical to treat it and never trim from the scene, without having previously convinced that there is a sufficient stock. It even became interesting: what did the Nissan Ramon Ramona Saw, who keeps his School of Off-road, who keeps his School of Off-road School, who keeps his school off-road ride in Europe.
From the Cairo hotel we had to get to the start of the start test drive on a military helicopter. But at the last moment it turned out, not fly. Not because of the lack of fuel or helicopter (they are just enough in the Egyptian army), but, as it was said, because of the problems with the environment. It hardly believed since the time of the war with Israel, the Egyptians have a fairly wary attitude towards Western journalists, and military bases around Cairo that we have commercial tents around the metro station. We are going along the way to the place of parking the test machines in the traditional way by bus.
 
Some love more authentic. In Cairo, where, it seems, there are two traffic lights on the whole city, the movement can even be compared with Moscow. But in situations, when we had long been closed if you were not for Kalashnikov, then for the mounts exactly, the Arabs only emotionally wave their hands and something loosely vote on their singement, like: Well, brother, you give.
On the outskirts of the city stand in a number of twenty those most patrols. Someone from colleagues disappointing says: Well, and what's new here? Indeed, external changes compared with the previous version there is practically no except that the radiator grille has changed. Approximately the same applies to the cabin: in the long-pass version, all the same leather and wood, the former combination of devices, only the place of the barnomer takes the display of the GPS an indispensable thing when traveling by off-road. I choose the long-pass exactly it is assumed to official deliveries to Russia in versions with mechanics and machine gun.
First light disappointment. It seems exactly the same car, only with a gasoline 4.5-liter engine, the autopilot compared a couple of years ago with Dodge Durango, and the Japanese put on both the American blades, leaving the most pleasant impressions. Now, everything seemed to be replaced: there is neither a confident jerk on overtaking, nor tangible pushes of the kickdown, the engine quietly sings his song and is not particularly going to overtake someone. Stop. This is a diesel. And comparing it with a gasoline version, besides intended for the Arab Emirates, simply incorrectly. Let's see what it differs from his 2.8-liter predecessor who has not been highly popular in Russia in Russia.
Plus on plus. The new engine is exactly 20 percent more powerful, in fact, from every 10 added cubes, the Japanese removed percentage. For forty percent, the torque increased by such a line (354 nm), few of the more titled fellow fellow elements can boast. While the new power unit lost two cylinders, it became substantially quieter, it decreased almost a liter consumption of diesel fuel, the maximum speed increased, and the acceleration time of up to 100 km / h decreased. True, the maximum speed remained for us a mystery: while on the speedometer it was 160, our GPS showed a maximum of 140. Well, and to whom to believe? In the transmission of modernization, shaft bearings, synchronizers and overtaking couplings were subjected. By the way, the four-wheel drive on Patrol still can be turned on as a lever from the cabin and outside, using the key. Another branded bane is also preserved not only to block the rear differential, but also to dissolve the rear stabilizer of transverse stability. In short, there is obvious preservation and strengthening of primarily off-road qualities.
Arab pork. Nature ends unexpectedly. Something disappeared by luxury eucalyptus on the roads, irrigation canals, we have been sawing on a narrow asphalt thread among the sands. Congress on the side road and the track no, one direction. No matter how much it wanted to turn on the air conditioner (it is very pleasant after Moscow to warm up on a 28-degree sun), but it is necessary. The climate control monitoring algorithm leaves much to be desired, and with a bright sun on the liquid crystal display, the recycling icons and the operating signal of the air conditioner are clisted. We are going in a dense dust cloud on a route 60 km long to camps in the sands.
The best way to move on machines in the desert, may Allah forgive me, pig. If anyone watched the film Alexander Nevsky, remember how the Teutonic knights wedge went to the attack. Only in our case, we are not going to cut anyone, but just strive to leave from under the nasty dust, with which the salon filters are hardly coped, because every 510 km should stop: wait for those who have retired, photograph local fantastic landscapes.
On one of the high-speed sections, we test ABS and handling: a colleague from Poland did not understand something with the connection of a full drive, its car turns 180 degrees right with us in front of the nose, we destroyed the brake with the simultaneous steering wheel, we leave, pop up at low Gorka, and for those half a second that the car literally flies through the air, flashes a convulsive thought: now breaks. But the suspension is withstanding, as, however, running forward, it will also withstand and more than once, Nissanovs did not go on the vicious, in our opinion, ways to create parquet jeeps, but left it as it should be on real SUVs dependent.
House under the starry sky. Before the camp we arrive without adventure. Journalists feel boaster: The symbolic distribution of pebble keys with written marker numbers from numbers that are tents with sleep bags. The most underlying immediately begin to rinse with water from copper jugs, the most hungry rush to a tent with a sign of Restaurant, and the most romantic observed into the telescope behind the moon and the stars, which are here as we have in August.
The night goes quietly, not believing that the author of these lines in the morning is frozen nose: the temperature from daytime 30 degrees dropped to + 5o. The desert is still.
Sand blasting. The overall technician-Spaniard demonstrates me prettyly remembered terrano-II from the accompaniment group, explaining this with an eloquent word of crash. Yes, I myself have already managed to notice numerous chips on the windshields of our patrols and abrasions on their sides.
Five kilometers, I understand where they came from.
Of course, it is impossible to compare the Russian liquid dirt and the desert scorched by the sun, but about all sorts of snobism to different southern rally there was to forget. Here everything is in an adult. Stony land with rare sharp stones (not to sprawling rubber) is replaced by fields with wave-like, as hundreds of lying police officers, formations. It seems that they can be soul. Sand after the first unsuccessful attempt to overcome it (it was released only with the help of a shovel and the sandpracks sublated under the wheels) turns out to be quite unstable. Jeeper friend speed that helps fly to solid ground on this sand. She is his enemy, because, for example, flew to the top of the velchana, it is easy to go to an unplanned flight or simply bug into the cunning opposite slope. During the test drive, by the way, Nissan thus lost two cars.
The most adrenaline part of the program is descent on steep, under 100 percent, slope. Drivers of long-base machines immediately turn off the rear stabilizers of transverse stability and block differentials. This measure, unnecessary on the highway, on the descent with two huge pits in the middle immediately makes itself felt: the car is though both roll, but the wheels do not lose clutch, and even when one of them hangs in the air, the car continues to confidently move forward. So given in the table data on the off-road qualities of the car True True.
During the test drive, thank God, we could not appreciate the robust passive and active safety of the machine, nor the work of the side airbags. I had to believe the word to manufacturers about the reliability of the new NATS anti-theft system with anti-hayking features and built-in immobilizer. The main conclusion that can be done about Nissan Patrol GR is a serious SUV, one of the best in its class. Perhaps he is deprived of many of the increments and non-peculuns, characteristic of the closest competitors, but clearly wins in terms of passability. About reliability to judge while early the first copies of Patrol GR 3.0 di will appear in Russia not before summer.
 
Text Alexander Fedorov, photo of the author and Nissan
 

A source: "Autopilot"