If the 2016 Nissan Navara ST-X marks unique territory on high-end dual-cab 4×4 ute landscape, it’s not, despite television advert suggestion, its capability to negotiate the innards of a runaway metal pipe. Instead, this reinvented Navara’s headline change is the adoption of multi-link, coil-sprung rear suspension unique in the rugged, load-lugging utility set, an attempt at achieving properly car-like ride comfort at an architectural level, if at the mercy of scrutiny over the suspension type’s tough truck suitability.
While its suspension may set ute-o-phile tongues waging, there’s more to the Navara ST-X’s grander pitch to well-healed ute buyers. It also promises rich and unique specification to compliment on-road comfort, segment-smashing fuel economy, highly competitive towing and payload-hauling abilities and, well, that daisy-like freshness of things all new. To many eyes, it’s quite the looker, too.
As a complete package, it promises to shine across the board no matter where you look, as you might well expect as its handsome $54,490 (plus on-roads) base price – including a $3500 premium for the seven-speed automatic transmission – sitting at the richer end of the flagship diesel all-wheel-driven ute segment.
