Review of the new Nissan Navara Pick-Up Range

Nissan's Navara is the powerful face of modernday pick-ups. Developed from car-like rather than commercial underpinnings, it's one of the first models of its kind that you really could, with a few compromises, use as single-vehicle transport. Try one and you realise just how far pick-ups have come.

Pick-up trucks used to be utilitarian things. Or at least they were until the lifestyle set picked up on them as a fashionable outdoor activity transport. Or the prosperously blue-collar self-employed began using them all-purpose only-cars. Both groups essentially wanted a load carrying car rather than a commercial vehicle - and so the modern pick-up was born.

The market's initial stab at this concept simply dressed up its existing products with bullbars, two-tone paintjobs and fancy cabins. Models like Nissan's 2001 first generation Navara, a tinselled-up version of their standard pick-up, were the result. Not good enough. Something essentially built to carry packages was never going to particularly appeal to people. So the company's Japanese engineers worked at it the other way around, starting with a clean sheet of paper and creating a pick-up from the basis of a car, rather than the other way around. The Spanish-built result reached these shores in 2005 when a design first created to be a lifestyle family 4x4 called a Nissan Pathfinder was reborn as the pick-up we now know as the second generation Nissan Navara.

The Navara sits high on its 17" wheels and chunky tyres, so you'll literally need to climb behind the wheel. Once you do and get moving, you'll find that in terms of car-like handling, this is the current state-of-the-art as far as pick-ups are concerned. That doesn't mean your Navara will handle as well as a conventional family four-door but it does make it a world removed from previous generation pick-ups and not that far off the clunkier passenger 4x4s on the market.

"Pick-ups constitute one of the UK's fastest growing vehicle sectors and at the wheel of something like a Navara, you realise why.."

Nissan's engineers would doubtless like to have achieved an even higher standard but were ultimately limited by this car's basic drawbacks of construction - namely its ladder-framed body, rear leaf springs and rigid live rear axle. None of that is conducive to a magic carpet ride, intended as it is to support prodigious weight across the enormous rear load deck. So it can be a little stiff and bouncy at the back if you hustle through the corners too quickly but nothing too disconcerting.

You can counter this to some extent by switching out of two-wheel drive into 4x4 High mode, possible to do on the fly by using a dash-mounted knob. Switch further into 4x4 Low range and you're at the wheel of something that feels pretty unstoppable. Yet a car that on major roads can be a surprisingly quiet and relaxed cruiser. Much of that is thanks to the well-suited 2.5-litre diesel engine that all Navara owners must have. With 174bhp on tap, it makes this one of the very fastest pick-ups you can buy with sixty 11.4s away from rest in this Double Cab version on the way to a garden shed-aerodynamics-limited top speed of 105mph. More importantly, offers a massive 403Nm of torque to make possible a 2,700kg towing capacity.

With styling based on that of Nissan's massive US-market Titan pick-up, the Navara is no shrinking violet in the styling stakes. At 5,220mm in length, it's substantially larger than the previous generation model, with a 3,200mm wheelbase. That means there's plenty of cabin space, even if you go for the halfway-house King Cab version with its backwards-opening doors and occasional rear seats. This is a bit of a compromise, so with good reason given that there's no two-door version, nine out of ten Navara buyers go for the Double Cab model I'm driving here. Its wide body and cabin length of 1,511mm means that there's plenty of room for five.

Storage space inside is now quite up to passenger car standards with a 6.0-litre box in the centre console and twin gloveboxes in front of the passenger. There are also specialist spaces for coins, cups and cards along with large door pockets and a neat sunglasses holder which folds down from a console in the roof. It also helps that the seats can be folded into various positions to further boost the capacity: you can flip up the seat bases at the back for example to access a hidden storage compartment that would be useful to keep, say valuable tools away from prying eyes. You can also flat-fold the front passenger seat for longish items that won't fit in the pick-up section.

That huge 1,861mm by 1,560mm load deck can support up to 1,045kg of weight and you could create a kind of all-purpose pick-up/cum van by going for the X-Back version we tried which offers a covered rear section boasting 1.8m3 of space.

That huge 1,861mm by 1,560mm load deck can support up to 1,045kg of weight and you could create a kind of all-purpose pick-up/cum van by going for the X-Back version we tried which offers a covered rear section boasting 1.8m3 of space.

Because pick-ups count as commercial vehicles, they have a low benefit-in-kind rating from the taxman, only £500 a year. Yet they have all the comforts and space of a normal car. That tax loophole has closed in recent years for those classed as employees but has continued for the self-employed who can if registered, also claim back the VAT on the purchase price. This goes some way to offsetting the slightly thirsty showing at the pumps, though for a vehicle of this size and weight, 33.2mpg actually isn't a bad showing, even if it does fall to 30.7mpg if you go for the slushy 5-speed automatic gearbox I'm trying here.

Most Navaras sell in the £15,000 to £22,000 bracket excluding VAT which businesses will be able to claim back. That's comparable to obvious rivals like Toyota's HiLux 3.0 D-4D 170 and slightly less powerful alternatives like the upgraded 160bhp Mitsubishi L200 or the 154bhp Ford Ranger 3.0 TDCi.

Though there's only that single engine choice, there are a wide variety of trim levels on offer, with over half of buyers going for the plushest leather-lined models. Most versions get features like rear step bumpers and side steps, 17" alloys, dual-zone climate control, a leather steering wheel and electric/heated door mirrors. Top models like this meanwhile, come with everything you'd expect on a luxury saloon including DVD sat nav, a premium audio system and Bluetooth 'phone kit.

Pick-ups constitute one of the UK's fastest growing vehicle sectors and at the wheel of something like a Navara, you realise why. Certainly, whenever people ask us which model we'd have in this market given the choice, the Nissan is always our starting point. Along with Toyota's HiLux, it rules the roost in this sector and quite frankly, anything else is very slightly second best. A powerful argument for mixing business with pleasure? That about covers it.

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Nissan Navara D/Cab Pick Up Tekna [Connect] 2.5dCi 190 4WD Auto diesel Double Cab Pick-up
Price £21,219 Read Navara Reviews	Save £3,468
Nissan Navara Double Cab Pick Up Acenta 2.5dCi 190 4WD diesel Double Cab Pick-up
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Nissan Navara D/Cab Pick Up Tekna [Connect] 2.5dCi 190 4WD diesel Double Cab Pick-up
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Nissan Navara Double Cab Pick Up Outlaw 3.0dCi V6 231 4WD Auto diesel Double Cab Pick-up
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Nissan Navara Double Cab Pick Up Tekna 2.5dCi 190 4WD Auto diesel Double Cab Pick-up
Price £19,981 Read Navara Reviews	Save £3,332
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