I have always liked the Nissan Navara and I have also felt that the bakkie should have sold way better than it has.

And I was looking forward to spending some time with their top-of-the-range Pro-4X, which would also be my first drive in a Navara since 2021. Back then I got to test the just-updated Nissan Navara Pro-2X.

The big news at the time was that the Navara was now being built locally. And that the updates would add some life to what then could have already been considered an aging range of offerings.

I remember the Navara Pro-2X at a retail price of around R680 000 as being right on par with just any Ford Ranger and Toyota Hilux. The drive and ride quality sort of bakkie-like, the off-road ability the same, the tech thereabout too and even the performance numbers were right in the same ballpark.

But what has happened since is that the double cab leisure bakkie market has moved on exponentially. Especially with the likes of the current generation Ford Ranger and VW Amarok production sibling. These now offer car-like ride quality and feel with state-of-the-art high-tech features.

Make no mistake, the Toyota Hilux is also as dated as can be, but Nissan just don’t have the gravitas that Toyota has locally. In fact, nobody has. I think everybody at Nissan in this country can’t wait for the all-new Navara (which shares a platform with the all-new Mitsubishi Triton) to arrive here sometime in 2025 with a bit of luck.

Market tougher than before

The current Nissan Navara Pro-4X that The Citizen Motoring had on test for a week retails for R844 000. This still buys you a lot of Ford Ranger and Toyota Hilux. And a bunch of new Chinese offerings from JAC, LDV and GWM.

If you think it was tough back then, it’s 100 times harder now. It’s one of the toughest segments in the market and new competition is coming in from everywhere these days.

This brings me back to my drive in the Nissan Navara Pro-4X. From a styling point of view, I think it has aged well and easily holds its own against most anything on the road.

Long in the tooth

The interior is not too bad either, with only the likes of the analogue instrumentation and lack of wireless charging and Bluetooth Apple CarPlay and Android Auto exposing some of the wrinkles and the true age of this double cab. Things that I believe many might be prepared to live with, or without for a choice of better words.

But it was on the road for me where the wrinkles really started to show in the Nissan Navara. I felt that the ride was just too firm for a double cab in the leisure part of the segment. Especially since the Navara has a pretty trick multi-link rear suspension.

When it came to straight-line, on the road, every day-type performance (we all know the Nissan Navara is as capable as anything off-road), it wasn’t so much that the 140kW/450 Nm, 2.5-litre turbodiesel powerplant let it down, it was the software configuration that expected the engine to rev all the way to 4 600rpm in every gear when you kept your foot flat.

Numbers not great

Anybody who knows anything about turbodiesels will tell you that they like to rev low and ride on that nice meaty chunk of torque that is available. So, in hardcore road-testing terms, this Nissan Navara Pro-4X was never going to return great numbers. And it didn’t as you can see in the stat box below.

It took 13 seconds plus to get to 100km/h, when the competitors are all starting to pull 10-second runs.

The roll-on, overtaking, acceleration numbers were not much better, with the Nissan Navara Pro-4X taking a full 10 seconds to go from 80-120km/h and double that when asked to go from 60-140km/h.

Decent fuel consumption

Full disclosure, I could easily improve on these numbers if I was prepared to sit and bang the gear lever up and down in manual mode (there are no steering wheel mounted paddles) just as the needle went just past 3 600rpm, the peak power point of the engine. But no normal owner is going to drive like this in an automatic, leisure-orientated, double cab on a daily basis.

It’s not all doom and gloom though, because driven in a way that does not require foot flat type of driving or overtaking, the Nissan Navara Pro-X4 is pleasant enough as transport. And is quite light on fuel with a number that came in at 9.9-litres per 100km.

But in this day and age these positives are not enough for the Nissan Navara Pro-4X to seriously challenge the other premium offerings.