Nissan Patrol Review: ‘Want’ vs ‘Need’ in a seven-seat 4X4 wagon
The most recent 2019 update to the Nissan Patrol is essentially one last ditch effort to revamp the old tank before retirement, and let’s be honest, nobody really needs a Patrol.
But there are some very good reasons for wanting one.
If you’re shopping for a full-size four-wheel drive which seats seven and is dripping with attitude, don't bother with the Toyota LandCruiser, especially if you want to keep $30,000.
And just because I describe it as a tank, that doesn’t mean it’s cumbersome or impractical, because it’s bloody excellent at both being a bloody capable off-roader and a civilised thing to use in the throws of ordinary life like shopping, transporting children and shopping.
In fact, there’s even been something of a resurgence of the Nissan Patrol in the last couple of years, particularly in the 4x4 community, as eager drivers look for something late model with all the creature comforts but less of the extreme-pricetag that goes with the Toyota. Patrol sales have steadily improved in recent years. In fact 2020 saw a 44 per cent increase over 2019 to the tune of 2820 units. Sure, it's overshadowed by the 15,000 LandCruiser sales in 2020, but Patrol is gaining popularity, which means more parts, better servicing and a healthy used market if you can’t stretch for a new one.
It’s easy to call the Patrol names. It’s braindead simple to turn your cashed-up bogan nose at the Patrol simply because it’s ‘not as good as a LandCruiser’. Which is bullshit. Toyota simply has a reputation; they’re not indestructible, and certainly not perfect.
So, to that I’d say, ‘Good’, because the Patrol has character I think the LandCruiser lacks. It says that you’ve actually looked at the value-for-money proposition and realised the LC200, which outsells Patrol 9 to 1, is not all it’s cracked up to be. It’ll take about half a million kays to make up the price difference between a top-shelf Patrol and the LC Sahara. And $30K buys a helluva lot of petrol to stoke that big V8. And in the context of fuel prices, it’s actually not as expensive to fill this thing up as some might have you believe. $210 for a 140L tank.
And as for reliability, that term Toyota fans love to use against every other brand, I’d argue that those in glass ceilings shouldn’t throw stones. And it’s not like Nissan has a systemic problem with its Patrol or its petrol engines, especially one that has been comfortably in service for 10 years. And there isn’t a diesel particulate filter in sight. And I’d argue the only recall issued for the Y62 Patrol has been the Takata airbag inflators; so it’s a pretty solid product.
What I have noticed is plenty of Y62s getting around with stealthy, modest accessories like roof racks, rear jerry can holders, fat 35-inch tyres and the odd snorkel or bull bar. You might even describe it as a following. In just 10 days in my local area I must have seen about five Patrols - two within the same vicinity as you’ll see in my photos.
Features and driving
What tasks are you actually going to ask of your big seven-seat off-road beast? Are you genuinely travelling to Kakadu via the Gunbarrel Highway once you’ve circumnavigated Tasmania and planted a flag atop Mt Disappointment in the Great Dividing Range?
Or are you going to do lots of highway touring with a caravan in tow, bikes on the back and make occasional side excursions up various moderate 4x4 tracks? If you’re doing either of these things, I genuinely don’t think you need a LandCruiser. And the Patrol has everything you need to do both long-distance super-comfortable touring, or climbing up dodgy tracks or camping on Fraser Island’s famous beaches.
Nissan has a pretty big dealer network in most large regional towns in the rare event something goes wrong, and the Patrol was designed and built with longevity in mind, hence the Y62 platform is still going.
So I think you’re pretty safe, which means you can enjoy the benefits of all the updates this behemoth has had over the years, starting with its radar cruise control - a feature I never expected to see in this generation Patrol. And it’s a pretty good system, surprisingly; I thought it might’ve been a bit dim and struggled with some of the intricate driving situations on a freeway such as merging traffic or changing lanes. But it’s actually quite good, albeit slightly eager on the brakes when a vehicle merges in front and you need to increase your gap. Although I am nit-picking.
You get four selectable off-road modes which tailor the traction control, throttle and gearbox to either rocky, snowy or sandy driving situations. This is as easy as rotating a dial, which is significantly less effort than pull down on the old low range lever in my mum’s old GQ Patrol; the one I learned to drive in. We called it the ‘bronze bullet’ because once you launched it and got going in that monster, the brakes were so shit it was hard to stop it.
The brakes in the Y62 are actually really good. I never thought I’d say this about a Patrol, but they actually make the whole vehicle feel surprisingly agile. I didn’t intend to talk about how good the brakes are in this vehicle, but there you go.
The chilled centre console is another highlight of the Patrol, which you don’t get in the LandCruiser range at all - and it does a very good job, it must be said. I’ve put a completely warm Furphy in there on a 3hr trip to Apollo Bay where it was cold on arrival.
The climate control is strong and forces cold air through the vast cabin quickly, even on a hot day. Mind you, the whole joint sounds a bit like the inside of a plane with the rumble of the 5.6-litre V8 behind the firewall and air rushing into all three rows.
The phone connectivity is pleasantly quickly to connect to and the satnav does okay if you’re out of cell reception, but obviously Google Maps will always be superior. Sadly you don’t get Apple/Android
Third row seating is quite spacious, although the seat is right on the floor, so as with most, it’s okay for average-size adults, but not ideal. And the headrest extend quite high, suggesting a tall person would benefit, but alas, only tall kids. While the third row is up however, there is actually room for stuff. I filled three shopping bags which sat perfectly in the space behind row three, with a scooter onboard, with room to spare.
Speaking of, you would be rooted driving a Patrol with anything other than a full-size spare, which can be found mounted underneath the rear of the vehicle. There’s a decent storage bin under the floor for towing apparatus, ropes, straps and things like that. And of course when you drop row three, the floor is flat and leaves you with a massive cavern in which to stack half the house on those epic roadtrips. You can easily slot a couple of bikes in there, you can drop the 60-section of row two and probably get a reasonable size surfboard in there diagonally - if you can’t be bothered clambering up to the roof.
Speaking of which, have fun trying to wash this thing, won’t you? If you don’t want a sunroof covered in bird dirt I’d suggest a carefully placed ladder.
Towing
I must confess, I had lofty intentions to hitch up the family camper trailer for an easy weekend trip to a quiet little campsite.
But it was the week or so before Christmas and all through my household, the carry-on of a two-year-old plus last minute changes of plans meant great ideas found the proverbial backburner.
But the fact is the Patrol at its full 3.5 tonne GVM is a big hauler. They say 3.5 tonnes as a maximum braked tow capacity, but you shouldn’t be towing anything heavier than about 2.5-2.8 because Patrol weighs 2.8 tonnes and pulling anything heavier is just dangerous. Same goes for LandCruiser.
You'll get a decent 633kg of payload in the Ti-L which I drove, or you can sacrifice the luxuries like sunroof, Bose stereo and heated/cooled seats (among others) in favour of a 688kg payload. That’s more payload than the 610kg in the GXL LandCruiser, also asking $100,000 but at the same price point, your kids get a DVD dual-screen system so they'll be better entertained in the Nissan. Just don’t try to hitch up the full 3.5 tonnes because you’ll lose payload to the point LC wins. But realistically, you’re not going to tow 3.5 are you? No. Good.
Both vehicles are going to tow any reasonable size trailer with relative ease. I mean, look at it: a Patrol isn’t gonna be pushed around by anything smaller than an average size asteroid, so long as you monitor tyre pressures… which you have to do manually, but if you’re a rural buyer this shouldn’t be an issue because you would carry a pressure gauge and air compressor at all times. Yes?
Issues and compromise
A 100k LandCruiser GXL can only put manually adjustable cloth seats under your backside, where the Patrol gives you powered leather.
The GXL does claim to offer eight seats, but you’ll find it's just a headrest in the centre of row three. Also, you’re going to struggle finding LandCruiser stock in 2021 as the new 300 Series approaches in 2022.
As far as stock levels are concerned with Nissan Patrol, I’d suggest you make the decision soon because it’s unclear how good the new Patrol will be until it has some mileage in-service. But the new one, in many ways, won’t be as good as the Y62; an analogue watch with a digital face.
It’s hard to gloss over the Patrol’s err … detractions.
It’s misguided to think of the Patrol as ‘too big’, because it’s not. It’s shorter than a Mazda CX-9. But even still, it does stick out of some carparks, also like the Mazda seven-seater.
It will be a challenge for some people to ignore the dated interior’s synthetic woodgrain trim, but I would encourage any would-be buyer to be realistic: aesthetics are a sideshow. If the vehicle is reliable, well-built, and does what you need it to do, and it is a cheaper alternative to a competitive product with inherent flaws, then calling ‘no deal’ because of an aesthetic you don’t like is misguided in my view.
I know it’s not my job to tell you how to spend your money, but I do encourage people to think logically and be reasonable about their decision. Moving on…
Installing a child seat is only moderately tricky. The top tether anchorage point is way down the bottom of the seatback, which means clipping it in or unclipping it with the third row folded down is difficult. If for example there is slack in the top tether which needs pulling through the clip, depending on where you are in the car, you have to either lean over the backseat to lift the third row with one hand - which is hard because it’s quite heavy even for me - and then pull the slack through with the other hand. Or you can go via the boot, climbing in, lifting the third row (again not easy) and then leaning over it to reach the tether. Or you can stand on the running board at the back doors and reach over the child restrain and pull the tether.
The point is, row three’s seatback is quite tall/long, so when it lays flat, it blocks the anchorage points of row two. If you move your child restraints a lot, this will grow tiring almost immediately. If they never move, then it’s going to be less of a concern - and I don’t think it’s quite a deal breaker because at least row three is easy to deploy unlike, say, the Pajero Sport which splits the seat base and seatback in two parts. Now that is infuriating on an otherwise good seven-seat 4WD vehicle.
While I can overlook the dated fake wood trim on Patrol (which is fixed with some clever synthetic wrap materials available from AutObarn, if you can be bothered), it is quite irritating how easily sunlight reflects off the thick chrome strips running down the edges of the centre console and transmission tunnel. The enormous windscreen is very good at letting in natural light, as is the big sunroof, so putting chrome here is very distracting when it reflects into one’s eyes.
The reversing camera is okay in Patrol, but it’s rather off-centre to the vehicle which makes lining up the towball difficult unless you have the 360-degree camera. But even that is hindered by the same issue of Mazda’s CX-9 360-camera, where black boxes represent the final however-many-centimetres of space at the front and rear corners of the vehicle. Not the actual road/environment. I hate this. I want the camera to show me exactly what I can’t see, the real situation behind me. I don’t want some black illustration blocking out the yellow parking bollard or the wayward little tree branch that is on the edge of the main camera’s view. If something is in those black areas, I want to see it, not just get tones from the sensors.
Patrol is a massive vehicle and I’m totally blind to anything behind. I need as much visual accuracy as possible. Now, I regard myself as pretty good at parking. I’ve never hit anything, ever. Touch wood. But I haven’t had to live with a Y62 Patrol every day, and long-term, this would probably be something I would learn to adapt to. But some drivers may not. And having said all this, everything else about the camera is fine - good resolution, it activates the instant you select reverse, the tones are accurate and you get dynamic distance and guidelines.
Also to Nissan’s credit - at least you get a 360-degree camera (even on the $85k base model) with reverse emergency braking. You won’t find one on the $136,000 LandCruiser Sahara, which is disgraceful. I’ll take the black corner boxes and off-centeredness if it means the car stops if a kid steps out from behind a parked car or hedge.
As mentioned, Patrol is big, but only in its 5.17m length, really. The misconception is that it actually just fills out into the corners of its dimensions. Take the previous-version Toyota Rav4 which was longer than the new one, but it offered less interior room because within its length, height and width, it didn’t expand into what you might call its ‘box’. The new version does - you might call it ‘boxy’ even.
Patrol is a bloody big metal box. It fills right out into the rear corners which means row three occupants get excellent headroom. It has a long bonnet underwhich to house that vast engine and the fans to cool it, it also needs a big air-con unit to keep your tribe from overheating, and it has a huge battery to power its many electrical features and to crank the starter motor to fire up those humming eight cylinders. So yeah it’s big in the context of smaller, more modern vehicles and powertrains, but it’s not insane.
In fact I’d argue it’s got space the much more affordable Pajero Sport simply cannot match.
The driver and passenger get A) big seats with ample elbow room; and B) heaps of room to stretch legs on a long journey because A) the width is 1995mm excluding the door mirrors (so it fills out where most SUVs are 1995mm including mirrors); and B) the wheelbase is 3.75 metres like a Kia Carnival. It’s 10cm longer than a Mazda CX-9, which is the second best selling large SUV in the country - it’s hardly small, but nor is it ‘too big’ to the point of being impractical. Don’t let yourself be tricked into thinking Patrol is ‘too big’ - it’s definitely not. It might just take getting used to from your perspective, but the fact is it fits into the same parking bays, down the same streets and lane markings, and I'll clear the Maccas drive-thru (yes, I tested it).
The worst part of Patrol being as ‘big’ as it is, keeping in mind it easily cleared the 2m height restriction in my local carpark, is that it just means it’s that little bit closer to other morons in other cars in the parking spaces next to you. So if they open their door carelessly, there’s a chance they’re going to clobber your Patrol right in the centre of that vast white sheetmetal. During my 10-day loan (thanks to Nissan Australia), I pathologically parked in the back corners of carparks to avoid the potential for this. But to be fair, I do this religiously even in my own cars.
Also, I did notice the digital fuel range and the analogue gauge were sometimes a little at-odds over how much 95RON petrol I had left in the 140-litre tank. When I picked it up at a full tank, it said about 700km, then as the needle slowly dropped toward 3/4, it was still saying about 690-700km. It wasn’t until closer to two thirds that the digits started to come down. Not that I was complaining.
Living with a beast
If you have kids between about two and five, where you’re still helping them dress, load and unload their things, and you have a caravan, camper or some serious tents, then the Nissan Patrol is gonna be awesome. It literally becomes an exciting part of your trips because it’s big, imposing and as practical as a cargo shorts.
A morning playing in the river meant taking advantage of the Patrol’s waist-high boot floor to change the kid’s wet togs for clean dry clothes, while remaining massive enough to continue holding his awkwardly large scooter without having to lift it out in order to lay him down. That’s one less opportunity for clumsy me (or you) to biff the rear bumper.
Our boy learned the word ‘huge’ because of the Patrol, which was something of an homage to how I learned to drive and go on roadtrip adventures thanks to my mum’s old GQ back in the day. Obviously the Y62 is a vastly better vehicle in every single way than the old ‘Bronze Bullet’. I mean, it goes like stink when you give the order, and sure, it’ll use a bunch of fuel doing that, but its inconsequential - you’ll never notice (plus fuel is cheap, especially in the context of buying a $90,000 4WD). I once filled up a LandCruiser Prado from near-empty a few years ago - cost me $120. While that was significant as average-wage motoring journalist, anybody buying a Patrol, insuring it, putting tyres on it, servicing it etc., $120-ish per fill is not going to hurt you. Crashing it might, so watch the road, not the fuel gauge - and if you do someday happen to run ‘er dry, you won’t be suffering the financially-induced myocardial infarction caused by doing the same to a diesel LandCruiser.
I think it’s a mistake to think the Patrol is too big, because it’s not. It’s gullible to think the Toyota LandCruiser is the superior vehicle, too - it has many flaws and it’s overpriced, and it’s a bit boring. Honestly, just because everyone has one doesn’t make it the better vehicle.
Certainly, the Patrol has faults, but none that I can see as deal breakers.
The last worry I have is that this might be the last time we see such a hairy-chested hyper-masculine seven-seat high-riding off-roader from Nissan. In the current landscape of shifting political and climate-focussed rhetoric, where belief that cars make some tangible difference to climate change takes precedent for some people over the fact transport like the Nissan Patrol make nearly bugger-all impact compared to the real polluters - I feel like this could be the end of an era.
If you’re looking for a brawny, reliable, tough and ridiculously comfortable cruising machine that can go anywhere, I urge you to check out a Patrol. Take a test drive, because there can’t be many days of manufacture left for this wonderful beast.
Or you could wait for the ‘Warrior'edition which is reportedly coming later in 2021, which will, in my entirely subjective analysis, will be awesome. Dealers have reportedly been told to expect the Patrol ‘Warrior' in 2021.
And I’m not sure what the next generation Patrol is going to resemble - there are reports that the seventh generation began design in 2019-2020, but I’d almost guarantee it won’t have the larrikin charm of the Y62.