There’s a point in every car loan where the novelty wears off. The obvious features have been explored, eventually you stop thinking about the car altogether, and you just use it. That’s more or less what happened with the Nissan X-Trail e-POWER over the weekend, when a planned trip to Rotorua turned into around 600km behind the wheel.
It almost sounds planned, driving an X-Trail for a cross-country trail run, but this was purely coincidental. But, perhaps fittingly, the biggest takeaway wasn’t anything particularly dramatic, it was just how little drama there was. This specific trip down to Rotorua was the sort of journey that exposes the difference between a car that is interesting to tell other people about versus the one you end up wanting in your driveway long term.
I have a very constant theme with Nissan cars where they tend to grow up on you, maybe not being the flashiest as you jump in, but really earning their place as time goes by. And this is where the Nissan’s slightly old-school approach starts to make sense.
I’d already made the point in my first review that the e-POWER system makes the X-Trail feel more like an EV than a conventional hybrid and, after 700km, that impression has only become stronger. There is something particularly relaxing about knowing that the petrol engine is essentially there to make electricity rather than directly drive the wheels. Having owned multiple hybrids over the years, this change might seem irrelevant, but for people that are more mechanically inclined, it makes a world of difference. Around town, especially, the response is immediate and smooth, while on the open road the transition between electric propulsion and the engine generating power is largely something you stop thinking about – the latter being the main point.
My original X-Trail e-POWER review
A weekend road trip isn’t the place for a car that constantly reminds you how clever its drivetrain is. You want to set off, settle into a rhythm and arrive without feeling like you’ve been operating a machine for several hours, and the X-Trail does exactly that. It also proved a surprisingly good companion once we got to Rotorua. The trail half marathon itself obviously had nothing to do with the car’s capabilities, but the e-4ORCE system and the SUV’s generally composed nature were appreciated on some of the wetter, less than perfect roads around the region.
It usually takes some time behind the wheel to realise how well calibrated for real life a car is. Big screens, flashy wheels, will wow you in the showroom, but if the car annoys you or falls apart from an experience point of view, all of that is worth nothing. And the X-Trail (and pretty much every single Nissan) is completely sorted for day-to-day life. Thoughtful storage, incredible suspension tuning, and the feeling that the car was built by people that actually use those cars in their own lives.
I ended up not taking a single picture of the car – I’ve had the X-Trail multiple times already and the weather was just terrible. Which is another feather on the car’s hat: handling bad weather in quietness, refinement and safety is another thing that doesn’t make it to a spec sheet, but cannot be ignored.
And after a 21km run, when the last thing you want is a cramped cabin, the X-Trail’s ability to disappear around us was a godsend. Dave, who has also spent time with the X-Trail, came away with much the same conclusion: it is remarkably easy to live with, as you can see in his X-Trail e-POWER review But experiencing it over a weekend and 700km made that observation feel more tangible to me.
This isn’t a car that necessarily makes you fall in love with it on day one. By the time we were heading back to Auckland, I wasn’t thinking about screens, the e-4ORCE system or even the fact that it was a relatively unusual (but amazing) hybrid. I was thinking about how easy the journey had been.
