Double SUV news from Nissan. The brand gives the Armada in the United States a facelift and directly points to the Kicks that operate on the other side of the SUV spectrum.
Nissan has set a goal of bringing a total of ten new or revised models to the US market over the next 20 months. Six of them must make their debut before the end of 2021. It is now known which two of them are. Nissan presents the facelifted Armada and the refreshed Kicks to the American consumer.
We’ll start with the biggest of the bunch: the Armada. Although that model name was never used in the Netherlands, we do know an ancestor of the current Armada. It is the most recent version of the luxurious off-road executioner that we know as Patrol. Model name Patrol is still used in the Middle East for this model. Does the Armada have any more brothers and sisters? Hell yes. Infiniti sells an extra lavishly dressed derivative in the form of the QX80. Fair is fair: the facelift that Nissan is implementing, we know from the renewed Patrol already presented in the Middle East. The Armada also gets a different muzzle where especially the new, more C-shaped headlights determine the image. Nissan, however, gives the Armada a slightly different grille and a different front bumper than its Eastern counterpart. Changed lighting on the back. The units have a new LED signature and are connected by a chrome strip. The tailgate has been designed differently and the rear bumper is also fresh from the liver. That bumper, just like the front copy, is different from that of the Armada.
Nissan Armada
The interior is refreshed with a larger 12.3-inch infotainment system and a larger display between the clocks. On the engine list is again the thick 400 hp and more than 530 Nm strong 5.6 V8 that Nissan previously had in the Armada. The eight-cylinder is linked to a seven-speed automatic transmission that distributes the power to all four wheels. In the United States you can compare the Armada with, among others, the Toyota Land Cruiser V8, the ‘full-size’ Land Cruiser that has since been discontinued in the Netherlands for a while.
Kicks
Nissan does not have the Juke on the menu in the United States. Introduced in 2014, the 4.3 meter long Kicks is the smallest Nissan crossover on the market for American consumers. A facelifted Kicks was presented for the South American market in May this year, and now it’s the turn of the American counterpart. Where the Armada still got its own bumpers, the American Kicks is optically almost identical to the revised version that is sold elsewhere in the world. That means: flatter headlights, a modified grille and modified bumper work all around. The light units now have LED technology all around. The big difference with its international brothers: with the American Kicks, the lamps are connected behind each other by a reflective strip. Although the Kicks is sold in various parts of the world, the car does not come to the Netherlands. For us, the Juke is the smallest crossover from Nissan.