Category: Pick-ups 
Price Range: £19,245 to £26,795
Chunky styling, loads of torque, towing ability, adept off-road
Impractical around town, if you need to go there, overdone styling
It's a good compromise between a family 4x4 and a working vehicle, although it does seem a shame to get it dirty
Trucks like this aren't often seen in city conditions, but it should negotiate the supermarket car park and school run as well as it does farm tracks. Drivers graduating up from passenger cars will find it difficult to park and unwieldy on tight, twisty roads, but compared with less refined trucks, older pick-ups and tractors, it's a breeze. It's high, it's bombastic and it's surprisingly secure to hurry along. We love pick-up trucks and the Navara is great fun to charge about in. It's powerful and fast (for this type of vehicle) and nearly as amusing as a tank or a tractor for playing in the mud. On the road, it handles better than you'd expect, despite somewhat light steering and slow-acting suspension.
Yee-haw... the 2.5 Di diesel engine produces 133 bhp (up from the previous model's 104 bhp) which makes it the most powerful pick-up of this type, and there's a whopping 224 lb ft of torque, peaking at a low-down 2000 rpm. Although it's none too quick off the mark, it pulls well through the gears. This means it can tow up to 3000 kg of braked trailer, lug some heavy loads and make rapid progress on or off-road. Selectable four-wheel drive with high and low ratios and a limited-slip differential means that it can also tackle a bit of rough and mud, although with all that pretty chrome and the styling accessories, it seems a shame to get it too mucky.
Latest Readers' Drives About the Nissan X-TRAIL
wrote on 30 12 2007
wrote on 18 10 2007
wrote on 31 07 2007