Mr Alvares is a lawyer – ‘been one from time immemorial,’ according to him. I know that is good enough reason to stay away from him. But I don’t, since, one, he is my neighbour, two, touch wood, I am not one of his clients and three, he loves cars – especially those I bring home. He has always owned two cars at the same time, ideally one petrol and the other diesel. And he prefers any colour as long as his cars are white. Let me tell you, over the last four years, I have had some momentous starts to my weekends. He would take the cars, some of them extremely rare and maybe one-off examples in the Indian market, drive them as hard as his 72-year old body would allow, turn on the wipers instead of the indicators, brake spontaneously and violently with the left leg if the car has an auto ‘box, nearly miss the apartment block’s gates, make remarks that have me sit up and notice and then dismiss the machine summarily at the end of it all. Actually I made up most of the above – he has been driving for ages and he drives well (lest he sue me for slander). So when I parked the Nissan X-Trail on a Friday evening in my parking lot (Mr Alvares lives in an apartment directly above this space), I was expecting an early wake-up call.
Mr Alvares didn’t call. I was devastated. I went looking for him, only to find that the old cat had gone on a holiday – maybe to New Zealand or the US where his daughters live. Really, that was shattering, because the Nissan I had for the weekend could have been the perfect replacement for Mr Alvares’ trusty Qualis. He would have certainly laughed out loud if I had told him that it would cost the wrong side of Rs 20 lakh, but would have certainly appreciated almost everything else. You see, he is the ideal prospective buyer for Nissan – he certainly can afford the car, but he has been around for enough years not spend so much money on – in his own words – ‘just another Mercedes-Benz.’
Forget the cost, would he buy the X-Trail? The Nissan X-Trail brochure has lots of photographs of young and athletic men snow-boarding, mountaineering, wind-surfing, mountain-biking, riding water scooters, fishing, rafting... generally making politically correct attempts at suicide. I cannot imagine Mr Alvares doing any of these. He would probably use the X-Trail to commute, while employing a chauffeur to do the driving. All right, he might want to drive the car to church for Sunday morning bragging rights. Let’s put the X-Trail through a Mr Alvares series of tests.
Shift_X-looks
To begin with, the X-Trail looks good. It is a handsome machine that is well designed and well engineered from every angle. High-mounted headlamp units and the narrow three-piece grille make it look very tall. But obviously, it is not so tall since I, standing at 5 feet and 9 inches, can easily stand on tiptoe and see the top of the car. Taut flanks with very well defined and muscular wheel arches dominate the profile and the five-spoke wheels are simply the best to grace any Indian SUV yet. Behind, the Xmas tree tail-lamp clusters look spectacular but are certainly the only weak link in the overall design – only because every other car, from the Indica to the CR-V, has it these days. Another clever bit of design is the D-pillar that seems to hold and tuck the body panels together. Brilliant. Mr Alvares would have commented: ‘It does look a million rupees... but not two-and-a-half million.’
Shift_X-decor
Nissan today is run by Renault and the genius of Carlos Ghosn can be seen inside the X-Trail – at least in spirit. The design is so symmetrically clever that it can be used without any change for left and right hand side applications. However, austerity does not translate to boring, far from that. The centrally mounted instrument cluster may take time getting used to, but the centre console, finished in a metallic tone, looks sophisticated and is absolutely functional. The texture of the moulded plastic is of a very high quality and there are a total of eleven cubby-holes to choose from – some of them neatly refrigerated by aircon vents. Talking of aircon vents, there is one facing the driver right where the instrument console would be in normal cars – something everyone who drives this car in the height of summer, like I did, would appreciate.
The four-spoke steering wheel is just right to hold and ditto the ergonomically correct gear lever. Add points for the nicely contoured and electrically adjustable leather-clad seats which wouldn’t have been badly off in, say, a sports car. A quality jukebox with six-CD changer and six inbuilt speakers (the door mounted ones look really neat) complete the interior package. While it may only be slightly more spacious than the Honda CR-V and the Chevrolet Forester, the Nissan wins when it comes to pampering its passengers. And I have not even mentioned the panoramic sunroof – only the Maybach 62 has anything better. ‘Nuff said.
Mr Alvares’ insight: ‘Ah, leather, it is all nice and comfortable here though I care zilch for the music system... but my Qualis will take more people. Care to bet?’
|
