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The Titan is quick, too. Its 5.6-litre V8 engine (not available in any sports car, though I think it would be well suited to that application) produces maximum power and torque figures of 305bhp and 379lb/ft respectively. Nissan says that both these things happen at 3600rpm, which I don't believe for a moment, but what the heck - the upshot of it all is that the Titan can be made to leap from a standstill to 60mph in what I reckon, after admittedly vague and unscientific testing, to be something under nine seconds. And since a large proportion of that time is devoted to getting the thing going at all, it feels even quicker once it's up and running. And so, to my great surprise, the Titan proved to be both excitingly fast in a straight line and delightfully nimble on country roads, as long as there was clear evidence that nothing was coming the other way. I even risked a journey into town and found no problem negotiating mini-roundabouts.
I actually got to the stage where I found myself thinking I would quite like to own a Titan. It's comfortable (in the front, anyway - the rear seats are too small for adults), it's a hoot to drive, and although it uses an awful lot of fuel its consumption rate of around 18mpg isn't in a greatly different league from that of, say, a petrol-engined Range Rover. And what a towcar it would be. Not that any of this makes me approve any more of America's love of huge pickups than I did before. They use too much fuel and produce too much CO2, and the claim that they are perfectly safe in a crash as long as you're sitting inside one (rather than being in the small hatchback coming the other way) is puerile. For all that, though, I can see why US owners are fiercely defensive of their right to continue using these behemoths. The extraordinary difference in the cost of motoring over there has a lot to do with it - Americans may complain of rising fuel prices, but from a UK perspective (and indeed a European one) they are all but being paid by the oil companies to fill their tanks.
But the test car wasn't standard. It had a long list of options including increased towing capacity, extendable door mirrors, a lower final drive ratio, pre-wiring for a towbar, a transmission temperature gauge, Vehicle Dynamic Control, a utility package, electronic control of the driver's seat, a six-CD audio system, power adjustable pedals, an auto-dim rear view mirror and a digital compass, among other things. Bulging with all this extra equipment, the Titan costs $30,300, roughly the equivalent at the time of writing of £16,500. In the UK you can pay a lot more than that for a Primera. As with so much about the Titan, this statistic is more than a little thought-provoking. |
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Purchase price is another issue. As standard, the Titan gets air conditioning, cruise control, "captain's chairs" in the front, dual-stage front air bags and a powered sliding rear window.
