I never really gelled with our Nissan Qashqai. It is everything a drivers car should not be. Uncomfortably on a long journey, gutless, wallows through the bends. I have been trying to persuade the missus to let me change it for the last year quite unsuccessfully. We recently used the qashqai to tow my atom down to ariel for a service and spent a week down in sunny Weymouth. The qashqai, whilst it states a max towing load of 1350Kg and the atom + trailer were more like 1000kg it struggled, really struggled. It was just luck we never had to stop on a steep hill! She agreed that day that maybe a slightly bigger, heavier, more powerful car is the way forward. So with the green light I started looking!
Me being me obviously it had to be a turbo lol. I decided that a new generation turbo would be too much cash to spend so I did view a 2009 model. Great car and quick but my missus was nervous about driving a 'fast' car. I also started thinking about reliability and running costs etc. I turned my attention to the baby of the more recent range, the 3l diesel. I went and viewed one that was a bit of a dog and whilst millage was under 60k it had clearly had the sh*t beaten out of it by a previous owner! I was however impressed with the performance given the fairly low power output. I decided spec needed to be;
- Black with black interior
- Satnav
- park assist front and back
- rear camera
- whilst I liked the look of the bigger wheels I felt they drove far better on smaller wheels. Also with the smaller wheels the tyres seem to do a good job at protecting the wheels. That way the kerb can be used as a train track
- Tow bar
- PASM
I ended up settling for one without PASM. I am happy with the drive on the standard shocks. I am directly comparing it to a qashqai lol! It is was the tidiest one I saw with full porsche history. 44k miles. An added bonus it has th rear sun shades which means we can bin our cheap things from the qashqai. The dealer is also changing front discs and pads as they are low. Looking forward to picking it up early next week
Me being me obviously it had to be a turbo lol. I decided that a new generation turbo would be too much cash to spend so I did view a 2009 model. Great car and quick but my missus was nervous about driving a 'fast' car. I also started thinking about reliability and running costs etc. I turned my attention to the baby of the more recent range, the 3l diesel. I went and viewed one that was a bit of a dog and whilst millage was under 60k it had clearly had the sh*t beaten out of it by a previous owner! I was however impressed with the performance given the fairly low power output. I decided spec needed to be;
- Black with black interior
- Satnav
- park assist front and back
- rear camera
- whilst I liked the look of the bigger wheels I felt they drove far better on smaller wheels. Also with the smaller wheels the tyres seem to do a good job at protecting the wheels. That way the kerb can be used as a train track
- Tow bar
- PASM
I ended up settling for one without PASM. I am happy with the drive on the standard shocks. I am directly comparing it to a qashqai lol! It is was the tidiest one I saw with full porsche history. 44k miles. An added bonus it has th rear sun shades which means we can bin our cheap things from the qashqai. The dealer is also changing front discs and pads as they are low. Looking forward to picking it up early next week