Nissan Patrol LWB test drive since 2004 SUV

Nissan Akbar

This car has no Camel Trophy fame, it is not in service with the Bundeswehr and did not win the parishkar. In the western desert of Egypt, we checked what Nissan Patrol Gr 3.0 Di is capable of.
Patrol has become famous in a completely different field for more than two decades of it in hot spots of the UN mission, and in order to present the conditions in which you have to work, you need to recall the geography of military and humanitarian disasters: from Africa to the Caucasus. Next year, Patrol will celebrate its half -century anniversary, and Nissan considered it a matter of honor to release an updated version with an enhanced engine and a changed transmission.
Flew by. It is not recommended to use for drinking water from a tap I found such advice in a hotel memo for safety. On the topic of water in the next two days, I read a good dozen instructions, including the recommendation of the organizers of the test drive in the case of a car breakdown in the desert, it is especially economical to relate to it and never touch, without having previously convinced the presence of a sufficient reserve. It even became interesting: what did we come up with by the Nissan rally team under the guidance of the Spaniard Ramon, who was already familiar to the journalists, who keeps his SUV Riding School in Europe.
From the Cairo hotel we had to get to the place of the test drive by a military helicopter. But at the last moment it turned out, we will not fly. Not because of the lack of fuel or helicopter (there are enough of them in the Egyptian army), but, as it was said, because of environmental problems. It is hard to have a fairly wary attitude towards Western journalists from the time of the war with Israel, and the military bases around Cairo that we have commercial tents around the metro station. We go along the road to the place of parking of test cars in the traditional way by bus.
 
Some love more authentic. In Cairo, where, it seems, there are two traffic lights throughout the city, the movement cannot even be compared with Moscow. But in situations where we would have climbed for a long time, if not for Kalashnikovs, then for the mounts for sure, the Arabs only emotionally wave their hands and something soundlessly vote in their singing language, such as: well, brother, you give.
On the outskirts of the city there are twenty of the same patrols in a row. Some of the colleagues says disappointedly: Well, and what's the new one? Indeed, there are practically no external changes in comparison with the previous version per unless the radiator grille has changed. Approximately the same applies to the cabin: in the long -drawn version, all the same leather and wood, the previous combination of devices, only the place of the block of GPS is an indispensable thing when traveling by off -road. I choose a long -busy one, it is assumed for official supplies to Russia in options with mechanics and automatic.
First a slight disappointment. It seems that exactly the same car, only with a 4.5-liter gasoline engine, the autopilot compared a couple of years ago with Dodge Durango, and the Japanese laid the American's shoulder blades, leaving the most pleasant impressions of himself. Now everything seems to be replaced: there is no confident jerk on overtaking, nor tangible jerks of kikdown, the engine sings his song quietly and is not particularly going to overtake someone. Stop. This is a diesel. And his comparison with a gasoline version, which is also intended for the Arab Emirates, is simply incorrect. Let's see how it differs from its 2.8-liter predecessor, who did not enjoy the high cost and low-power particularly popular in Russia.
Plus plus. The new engine is exactly 20 percent more powerful, in fact, with every 10 added cubes, the Japanese removed the percentage. By forty percent, the torque has increased by such a traction (354 Nm) few of the more titled brothers can boast. Despite the fact that the new power unit has lost two cylinders, it became significantly quieter, the consumption of diesel fuel decreased almost by a liter, the maximum speed increased, and the acceleration time to 100 km/h decreased. True, the maximum speed remained a mystery to us: while there were 160 on the speedometer, our GPS showed a maximum of 140. Well, and who is there to believe here? In the transmission of modernization, shaft bearings, synchronizers and overall couplings were subjected to. By the way, Patrol all-wheel drive can still be turned on both from the cabin and outside, using the key. Another proprietary bauble is also preserved, you can not only block the rear differential, but also dissolve the thrust of the rear stabilizer of the pure stability. In a word, there is a clear preservation and strengthening primarily off -road qualities.
Arabic pork. Nature ends unexpectedly. Luxurious eucalyptus on the roadsides, irrigation channels disappear somewhere, we have been sawing for almost an hour on a narrow asphalt thread among the sands. The congress to the side road and the highway, one direction. No matter how much I wanted to turn on the air conditioner (it is painfully pleasant after Moscow to bask in the 28-degree sun), but it is necessary. The button climate control algorithm leaves much to be desired, and with a bright sun on the liquid crystal display, the recirculation icon and the air conditioner signal is difficult to see. We go in a dense cloud of dust along a route 60 km long to the camp in the sands.
The best way to move in cars in the desert, may Allah, pigs will forgive me. If someone watched the film Alexander Nevsky, he will remember how the Teutonic knights went on the attack with a wedge. Only in our case, we are not going to chop anyone, but simply strive to get out of the nasty dust, which the salon filters can hardly cope, because every 510 km there is a stop: the lagging behind the lagging, local fantastic landscapes are waiting.
In one of the high-speed sections, we are forced to test ABS and handling: a colleague from Poland did not figure out the connection of all-wheel drive, her car turns 180 degrees right in front of our nose, we frantically press the brake with a simultaneous jerk of the steering wheel, we jump out, pop The hill, and for those half a second that the car literally flies through the air, is a convulsive thought: now it will break. But the suspension withstands, as, however, running ahead, it will withstand more than once the Nissanists did not go along the vicious, in our opinion, ways of creating parquet jeeps, but left it as it should be on real SUVs of the dependent.
House under the starry sky. We get to the camp without adventure. Journalists feel like Boyskouts: it follows a symbolic distribution of keys-peaks with numbers written by a marker, which are tents with sleeping bags. The most suffered ones immediately begin to rinse water from copper jugs, the most hungry are in a hurry to a tent with a Restaurant sign, and the most romantic are watched in a telescope after the moon and stars, which are here as in August.
The night passes calmly, not counting the fact that the author of these lines froze in the morning: the temperature from the daytime 30 degrees dropped to +5O. The desert is still.
Sandbrush. The next morning, the Spanish technician shows me a pretty rumpled Terrano-II from the escort group, explaining this to the eloquent word Kras. Yes, I myself already managed to notice numerous chips on the windshields of our patrols and abrasions on their sides.
After 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 I had to forget about all kinds of snobbery addressed to different southern rallies there. Everything here is an adult way. The rocky earth with rare sharp stones (would not be rummaged through rubber) is replaced by fields with wave -like, like hundreds of lying policemen, formations. It seems that you can shake the soul on them. After the first unsuccessful attempt to overcome it (they got out only with the help of shovels and put under the wheels of the sandsters), it turns out to be completely unpretentious. Jeeper's friend, which helps to fly on this sand to solid ground. She is his enemy, because, for example, having flew to the top of a dunes, it is easy to go into an unplanned flight or just burying her nose into an insidious opposite slope. During the test drive, by the way, Nissan thus lost two cars.
The most adrenaline part of the program is the descent in steep, at 100 percent, slope. Drivers of long -drawn cars immediately turn off the rear reptile stability stabilizers and block the differential. This measure, unnecessary on the highway, on a descent with two huge pits in the middle immediately makes itself felt: the car, although it is rolled, but the wheels do not lose their adhesions, and even when one of them hangs in the air, the car continues confident movement forward. So the data on the off -road qualities of the machine is true.
During the test drive, thank God, we could not appreciate either the increased level of the passive and active safety of the machine, or the operation of the side airbags. I had to believe the word for manufacturers about the reliability of the new anti -angle NATS system with anti -hijacking functions and built -in immobilizer. The main conclusion that can be drawn about Nissan Patrol GR is a serious SUV, one of the best in its class. Perhaps he is deprived of many bells and bogs inherent in the closest competitors, but clearly wins in terms of cross -country ability. It is too early to judge the reliability of the first copies of Patrol GR 3.0 Di will appear in Russia no earlier than summer.
 
Text Alexander Fedorov, photo of the author and Nissan
 

Source: "Autopilot"