Six Decades as the First Global ‘SUV’: The Nissan Patrol Has a Past Worth Celebrating
As the 2013 Nissan Patrol releases to solid reviews in the auto press, it is an appropriate time to look back over the interesting 60-year history of the vehicle, which is now a sophisticated SUV with touch screens and leather options, but was once a more humble 4×4 built in Japan, but intended for the deserts and sand dunes of the Middle East where it initially underwent thousands of hours of testing.
Nissan Patrol 2013
Over the course of six decades, the Patrol has managed to move beyond its original Middle Eastern focus, becoming a global vehicle used by militaries, UN peace-keeping agencies, scientists doing field work, and by everyday people from around the world, from Southeast Asia to Australia, from the UAE to the Caribbean. Interestingly, the Patrol has never been available in North America, not under the Patrol name at least; in 2010, it was sold as a 2011 Infiniti QX56 there.
The first generation Patrol resembled a military-style Jeep, and it retained that basic style through all of the 1960s, with minor alterations made around 1959-60 in the second generation of the vehicle. It was around that time, the early 1960s, that an Australian geologist called Reg Sprigg used the Patrol to cross Australia’s forbidding Simpson Desert, making the Patrol the first vehicle to accomplish this feat.
By the early 1980s, in its third and fourth generations, the Nissan Patrol began taking the shape of a truck-like vehicle. It was a sign of things to come as, a decade later, the new category of Sport Utility Vehicles, or SUVs, would be created, a term that describes the newest manifestations of the Patrol perfectly. Today, the Patrol has come a long way from its Jeep-like beginnings and from some of its uses (for a time, it was even used by one country as an odd-looking fire truck). These days, a 2013 Patrol in the UAE, for example, is probably more likely to be owned by a business executive than it is by a rancher, researcher or military unit.
However, the Patrol is still used for such things; it has even been reported the Irish military currently uses the Patrol, and others might also. And while the Patrol vehicles for sale on the consumer market might look and feel posh, they still retain something of those original workhorse vehicles first created 60 years ago for the Middle East. For example, the 2013 Patrol features 4×4 handling, 3,500-kg towing capacity and a 5.6-litre V8 diesel engine – some serious brawn. So don’t let leather seats fool you: this vehicle has an adventurous history.
