As well as it being a modern car, even, and a CUV, or whatever they’re called now, even worse, I felt compelled to jot a few words regarding the Nissan Rogue that I rented to ferry my (now) geriatric folks to the memorial for my late father-in-law, Bill, whose middle name was interestingly, Delahaye.
“Okay, we’re ready.” Tatiana called as I stood and walked out with her to a Mini Countryman, lovely in black, but narrow and low. I opened the hatch. A walker will not fit in there. Mom and dad are smaller now; we all shrink as we age, but the Mini was just a bit too much of that narrow and low for a woman with two knee replacements, and and a fully fledged creaky old man, never mind me.
“I don’t think my mom’s walker will fit. Would you have anything that’ll fit two Old Folk, and their kit, as well as another person?” Tatiana said that a Rogue was being cleaned as we spoke. “Let’s do that, then.”
She said it’d be another twenty minutes, apologies implied. I didn’t have anywhere to go, and reading material, so no worries.
A black Rogue pulled in front of the doors. My car for the next couple of days. Tatiana motioned me outside and to my surprise, the car was not black, but a very GM style dark green- the shade everyone thinks of when they think of British Racing Green.
Opening the hatch, I was pleased. This will definitely work.
To my surprise, the car was a 2020 model, top of the line, so it was everything except hybrid. Touchscreen entertainment system with Sirius/XM, bluetooth, Google car suite connectivity- my phone is a bit too old, so it didn’t work properly, but I’m really impressed at the suite of apps that the car has, compared to the very basic, but competent system in our Hyundai Elantra GT. Moore’s law isn’t dead yet, at least as far as car infotainment systems go.
The Rogue is also equipped with a very modern protection system- Nissan calls it “Intelligent Mobility”, and it comes with all of the amenities that a car equipped with radar has- and I disabled one of them- the lane correction, because sometimes we (trained and experienced) meatsacks do know better. Driving the Rogue is like driving any modern car, push this pedal to go, press this one to stop, twist wheel to change direction, albeit with the computerized, radar informed guidance making sure that you don’t do anything too silly.
Now if this were a normal review, I’d go into detail about how much the CVT that Nissan uses has improved from the dreadful, mooing example that I lived with in the Nissan Versa that I’d used as a driving instructor, or how modern suspension technology enabled me to pitch the Rogue into a cloverleaf onramp while accelerating with no body roll whatsoever. Nope. I’ll just say that after a couple of days with this extremely competent vehicle, I now understand why crossovers and SUV’s are so popular.
The Department Of Past Issues 