With gas being cheap as it is and Super SUVs totally in, it’s time Nissan stop playing around with their Infiniti SUV’s and make themselves a Nissan GT-R based Super SUV of their own.
With the success of such Super SUV’s like the Lamborghini Urus and Cayenne Turbo and such SUV’s like the Jaguar F-Pace, Bentley Bentayga, and Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk even a thing, it’s time Nissan tapped into its racing heritage and superior AWD technology to make a Nissan GT-R based SUV of their own.
According to Lamborghini’s semi-annual sales report, the Urus makes up for close to 60 percent of all their sales. For an SUV that starts in and around $200,000, there’s a lot of pie left on the table, in my opinion, for a car manufacturer to come in and swoop up some Super SUV sales of their own.
The Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk and its supposed $80,000 MSRP is jumping in on the fun. So has Porsche and its Cayenne lineup longer than Urus has been around.
What those car manufacturers have that I think warrants the success of their Super SUV’s is a reputation for making some insanely fast and fun cars.
Jeep has its Hellcat lineup, Lamborghini has its exotics and same goes for the likes of Porsche and Jaguar. The list goes on and on.
Nissan has a very strong sports car heritage that resonates with youth and millennials flush with cash, particularly their long-dead Nissan S-Chassis, the GT-R, even their older generations thanks to new import laws, and, to some extent, their Z series of sports cars when they were actually popular.
And unlike Lamborghini and Porsche, Nissan is known for having one of the most sophisticated traction control systems with technology that’s been refined more than three decades, their ATTESA system or their Advanced Total Traction Engineering System for All-Terrain.
OK, sure the base MSRP price of the GT-R has gone up year after year, according to their latest numbers, a new one comes in around $113,000. That’s still relatively inexpensive for the performance you get.
Don’t make it an Infiniti
Infiniti has been going through a lot of issues as a luxury brand as of late. With sub-par interiors, wonky financing for SUVs and crossovers that have clear luxury substitutes from other brands, and a confusing model naming scheming (the least of their worries) their brand has some clear management and public perception problems they need to deal with, a complete overhaul should be in the works.
This GT-R based SUV shouldn’t be lumped into Infiniti, they’ve got their own issues, as mentioned, at the moment.
So, what would it be?
I think Nissan should use all the bread and butter parts from the GT-R, namely their legendary VR engine and AWD technology.
The hard part is the chassis. To make it move and turn with the best of them, they can’t use their F-Platform underpinning their current Armada or Infiniti QX80, it needs to be unibody.
It should definitely be bigger than a Pathfinder but not as lumbering as their Armada.
It seems like Nissan nor Renault doesn’t have a platform that can fit this formula at the moment.
If possible, perhaps Nissan engineers can repurpose the GT-R’s PM Premium Midship platform to accommodate larger suspension travel and true seating for five.
Attached are images of a really bad rendering from a Japanese Magazine. It definitely shouldn’t look that bad but, dimensions wise, you get the picture.
Consider the untapped potential the performance of Nissan’s 3.8L twin-turbo engine would have with its 565 HP and 467 lb-ft in a proper performance SUV chassis. That’s on par with the Urus with a far superior drivetrain.
Priced appropriately, it would undercut the likes of the Urus, F-Pace, and Cayenne Turbo.
As for the name, perhaps the Nissan GT-Xtrail or something along those lines.
Who would buy this GT-R based SUV?
I think this Nissan Super SUV would do really well with the millennial demographic, we, afterall, literally grew up with the GT-R via Playstation.
The VR engine already has such a larger tuner base that even if people opted for the lower priced Nissan Super SUV (whatever it’s going to be called) flash tunes inputted and simple add-ons can drastically increase power output to surpass even the Urus.
This is just me rambling but I really think this could be a money maker for Nissan. The GT-R is hard to justify for a small family man but an SUV with all the bones of a GT-R is another story.
Do you think this is feasible as a Nissan SUV? What’s your .02? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.
