Nissan Ti-L Pathfinder review: big in America
For this family road trip, size mattered.
It truly is unhealthy, embarrassing and possibly even dangerous how much I love America, and I have just returned from a few weeks dragging my family aroundit in an attempt to infect them with the same madness.
Obviously, we did a lot of driving – a 2343km round trip from LA to Vegas to Mammoth Lakes through Yosemite National Park and back, which added up to 35 hours seated high in a shiny new Nissan Pathfinder. And in that time I saw some truly alarming behemoths on wheels that made me think the world is surely screwed, because these people are never going to give up burning fuel. (At the same time, it did strike me that there were a helluva lot of Teslas, and that our much-touted complaint that EVs will never work in Australia because we all drive such long distances falls slightly flat when you consider how many miles Americans cover.)
Without doubt, though, the most disturbing wheeled conveyances I encountered were the mobility scooters. There really were a disturbing number of them. And they’re not just driven by the old and the infirm, but by people who wear quite large T-shirts that say “I wonder if burritos lie awake thinking about me” and festoon their scooters with extra cup holders. It seems many people in the Land of the Free Refills just aren’t built for walking any more.
Why does this worry me? Because when I first started visiting the US 30-plus years ago, I used to chortle at the idea that I’d ever see Australians driving pick-up trucks past billboards that advertise injury lawyers. And who’s laughing now? Toyota – which has announced that it’s likely to bring its Tundra Down Under and shift the steering wheel to the other side, because there’s so much local demand. The Tundra is a truck so large that it makes the HiLux look like a mobility scooter.
The Pathfinder I was driving might have looked big in Australia, but in America – even in a large SUV – you’re always intimidated by the size of everything else on the road. It’s like finding yourself in a bathroom with an NBA team. For our needs, however, the Pathfinder was perfect; big enough in the boot to swallow all our luggage, plus all the gear that my children would desperately need to purchase along the way.
Speaking of them, they each got their own capacious Captain’s Chair in our six-seat set-up, with fold-down arm rests and just enough space between them that they couldn’t quite throttle each other on longer trips. Their level of luxury even made them seem slightly more entitled than usual. They were also sitting far enough behind us that they could choose their own micro climate – best described as Polar Bears Frolicking, even as we rolled across the hot marvels of the Mojave Desert. Unfortunately for my wife – who is knee-high to a Kylie Minogue – there was no height adjustment on the passenger seat, so while we were looking at wide open vistas, she mainly saw a glove box.
The Pathfinder was the right size for me, happily, because on the USA’s glorious interstate freeways (I love them because no one sits in the fast lane driving slowly, ever, and 130km/h seems to be a widely accepted speed) it was high enough that I could see around at least some of the vast trucks in front of me. I also felt slightly superior because the new Pathfinder has a pretty face, for the first time ever, while most of the trucks around me looked like particularly large brick shithouses.
On the twistier roads through the mountains, and in particular in the magnificent Yosemite National Park, I faced the challenge of cornering with enthusiasm without upsetting the stomachs of smaller and less speed-obsessed passengers. Thanks to the Pathfinder’s light, enjoyable steering and a nice ride and handling balance, we were, mostly, able to achieve this.
Over the bigger climbs, I would have liked a bit more power than was on offer from the 3.5-litre V6 – but then we were asking it to haul ever more weight, as I kept stumbling on BBQ restaurants and all-you-can-eat buffets. Using the paddle shifters to work the Nissan’s nine-speed automatic transmission (a vast improvement on the old car’s CVT) definitely helped with driver involvement.
While the version I drove in America was called something suitably otiose like the Platinum Power Pack Chrome Silver Sparkle edition, it would be most closely aligned with the range-topping Ti-L Pathfinder that Nissan Australia is about to launch locally, which will carry a price of $77,890.
I must admit that, after so much time together, I became a bit emotional when I had to hand the big Nissan’s keys back. But I wept even harder when I had to leave America behind, although I did notice the rest of my family seemed much happier about coming home.
Nissan Pathfinder