Nissan is currently deep in development of the next-generation Navara, which is expected to arrive in Australia in 2026.
With it, the brand plans on launching a Nismo version that packs more off-road and performance punch.
Speaking to media, Nissan global product strategy vice president Ivan Espinosa said a Nismo-badged Navara is likely to come soon after the vehicle launches, leveraging the brand’s partners to make it happen.
“Well, this is also something that we are looking at [a Navara Nismo] and you could imagine seeing something along those lines with the partners that we are working on that as well,” Mr Espinosa.
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Current Navara Pro-4X Warrior
“So of course, this is in particular, in Australia, it’s something where we’ve been doing very good business and customers are very happy with what we’re providing. So you could think that we could probably do something along those lines.”
Nissan spent a great deal of time explaining the amount of work that went into the twin-turbocharged 3.5-litre petrol V6 engine in the new Patrol, especially for things like oil retention within the turbocharger cooling system.
When quizzed on whether that 317kW and 700Nm engine could be transferred to other Nissan platforms, Mr Espinosa explained that we could see some of this technology moved between models.
“That’s the only application that we have for that [the Patrol V6 engine], but you could imagine parts of that could be carried over to some future models.”
The new Patrol’s 3.5-litre twin-turbo V6
In theory, if Nissan wants to be taken seriously with a Nismo version of the Navara, we could see the turbocharged petrol V6 transferred into the Navara wearing a Nismo badge.
Such a tactic has been used by Ford with its performance Ranger Raptor ute, which uses the twin-turbo V6 engine from the much larger F-150 pickup.
One of the partners Nissan uses in Australia is Premcar, which was responsible for the Navara Warrior and Patrol Warrior – both products which were positively received by the Japanese brand.
It’s possible the Nismo could be a product borne from a project in partnership with Premcar, especially given that Nissan has already admitted that the Australian, South African and New Zealand markets are core for the sportier, more hardcore versions of dual-cab Navara products.
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