The secret Armada

A NEW four-wheel drive is putting Australia on the map with Nissan in Japan.

The giant Armada, the name it carries in the US, is also doing development work for another future 4WD being built for the Japanese brand.

The offroader was shipped to Australia primarily to gather information for a new Nissan proving ground and was caught near Melbourne by a keen reader with a digital camera.

Pictures of the left-hand drive Armada test machine show how it dwarfs a Patrol used as an escort vehicle for the left-hand-drive machine and the new style direction, reflected in its smoother shape and a unique tail end.

“It is here for a couple of weeks,” Nissan Australia spokesman Karl Gehling says.

He says fans of the new look and size of the Armada should not expect to see one in showrooms here.

“There is no plan to sell it here. It's America-only at the moment,” he says.

The Armada is, like many other big 4WDs, designed and built for the needs of Americans, who demand vehicles at least a full size bigger than anything sold in Australia.

It is larger than the Patrol, which is at the top of the Nissan Australia line-up, and has a V8.

“It's completely separate from the Patrol,” Gehling says. “It shares its mechanicals with the Titan, which is a full-sized pickup sold in the US.”

The calibration work being done by the Armada will be used to ensure Australian conditions are included in a new “extreme off-road test track” that Nissan has just built in Japan.

Nissan built the track at its Motegi facility to give it extra development capacity and to ensure the toughest possible conditions for 4WD testing.

The track, including desert road, rocky slopes and a 30-degree incline, is on a 2.3ha site and is claimed to be one of the biggest in Japan.

Apart from Tochigi, Nissan says it does its test work at two other Japanese operations and a proving ground in Arizona in the US.