Nissan Sport Utility Truck (SUT)

• September
• 2

4:32 am Trucks

With so much pre-show publicity, Nissan Motor Corp’s unveiling of its Sport-Utility Truck (or SUT) concept was almost anti-climatic. The SUT is a four-door sport-utility vehicle that has a pickup-truck bed in the back instead of a covered cargo area. The idea is to combine the seating space of a sedan, the functionality of a sport-ute and the practicality of a pickup.

A good idea, certainly, and one that quickly became news as a product theme at this year’s show. The problem is, by the time Nissan got around to taking the wraps off its much-ballyhooed concept, no fewer than three other manufacturers had already revealed similar vehicles - all of them promised for production.

That’s a real shame for Nissan, who after bleeding red ink for six of the last seven years was hoping to use the Detroit show as a springboard to revitalize its product-weak image with American consumers. The company has been struggling beneath the combined weight of $37 billion in interest-bearing debt and an economic free-fall in its home market, to the point of becoming a prime target for a takeover by another carmaker — if bankruptcy doesn’t swallow it up first.

Nissan would not admit plans for producing the SUT, saying only that it would take at least 18 months to go from a green-light decision to arrival at dealerships. But insiders tell us that the company — which desperately needs a fresh product that buyers can relate to in the wake of where the competition is headed — will begin production at its assembly plant in Smyrna, Tenn., later this year. Expect the first SUT’s to reach the market by early in 2000.

The highly stylized SUT is based on Nissan’s Frontier pickup platform, touting four front-hinged doors and a 42-inch bed. The show version is four-wheel-drive, powered by a 170-horsepower, 3.3-liter V6 hitched to a four-speed automatic transmission.

The Ford Explorer Sport Truck has more horsepower. The Dodge Dakota Quad Cab seats six. And Lincoln’s Blackwood is far larger. But Nissan’s SUT has one attribute that none of its newfound competitors has. And that’s a rear liftgate at the back of the cab, directly behind the fold-down rear passenger seat. The liftgate (four feet wide at its lower edge) swings upward like a minivan’s, allowing loading of sheet plywood or items that would otherwise be too long for the short bed.

The Sport-Utility Truck is an idea whose time is now. Nissan North America president Minoru Nakamura thinks vehicles like the SUT can save the automaker from takeover or bankruptcy. “It’s important we live on our own,” he told reporters. “This new vehicle shows we can do it.”