Nissan Cabstar Car Review

Facts At A Glance MANUFACTURER: Nissan MODEL: Cabstar BHP: 110bhp - 150bhp PAYLOAD CAPACITY: 1,296kg - 1,579kg LOAD VOLUME: N/A GROSS VEHICLE WEIGHT: 3.4t-3.5t LENGTH: 4,595mm – 6,465mm WIDTH: 2,265mm-2,529mm HEIGHT: 2,122mm-2,116mm July 27th 2010

STAR TURNER

Our Rating: 3.1 / 10

Nissan’s Cabstar is short on finesse but long on practicality. Steve Walker checks it out

It might be a little rough around the edges but you can’t deny the Nissan Cabstar is great at its job. An ultra-tight turning circle and good all-round visibility make it a dab hand at moving heavy loads into tight spaces. Likewise, the engine and gearbox can be found lacking on the open road but both are just what you need in the in the Cabstar’s native urban environment.

There’s something refreshing about a vehicle that bypasses the airy-fairy stuff that’s increasingly prevalent in the modern automotive industry. Nissan’s Cabstar has always been a prime example, a complete stranger to soft-touch materials, integrated control systems and retro design concepts. It’s built to do a demanding job and if it assaults your eardrums and puts your breakfast through the spin cycle in the process, you’ll just have get over it. The latest model was designed to be easier to live with but you just know it’s still going to be a tough customer at heart.

The qualities that make a product excel at one thing often make it borderline useless at something else. In the same way that you wouldn’t use your iPod to stir your tea in the morning, you wouldn’t try to drive a Lamborghini Gallardo across a ploughed field. You can have a highly evolved piece of design that’s beautifully fit for purpose but take it away from its area of specialisation and it may start to flounder. Like the Lamborghini, a vehicle created for the express purpose of looking sexy and going quickly, Nissan’s Cabstar is built for a clearly defined role. Use it for moving dirty and/or heavy cargo over short distances in areas where space is at a premium and there’s little to beat it. In some other respects it can seem a little uncouth.

Power in the Cabstar comes from one of two common-rail diesel engines, both Euro 4 compatible. The 2.5-litre unit comes in 110 and 130bhp form while the 3.0-litre option generates 150bhp and in all cases, power is directed to the rear wheels. The power outputs might look meagre on paper for a vehicle that can carry as much as 1,500kg but the Cabstar isn’t built for speed and its engines are tuned for torque. You get 250, 270 and 350Nm respectively from the three powerplants and the torque curves are flat so the shove you need to get a fully-laden Cabstar moving is on tap even at low revs. The engine is hard at work just below where you sit in the vehicle.

The latest Cabstar benefits greatly from a revised gearbox. The set-up in the old model, for reasons best known to Nissan, had reverse gear where first should be and visa versa. This opened up a wealth of opportunities for embarrassing accidents if you were new to the Cabstar but the current ‘box is conventional in layout and usefully smoother. 1st and 2nd gears are very short to get you off the line and make sure the truck doesn’t flounder on steep gradients but once you get the hang of it, you can spirit the Cabstar along at quite a lick. It will lift an outside front wheel under hard cornering and you feel like you’re going rather faster than you actually are with nothing but the windscreen in front of you but these factors can be put down as inbuilt safety features, encouraging hot shoe drivers to slow down a bit.

The ride quality has improved on the Cabstar which uses independent front suspension but don’t get your hopes up. The experience on poor surfaces is now merely like riding a mechanical bull whereas the old model could have served as a training vehicle for those planning a crossing of the Southern Ocean by lilo. The rigid rear axle is partly to blame here but it does allow the Cabstar to take those large payloads and the rear wheels put the engine’s power down without any problems.

The first time you clamber up into a Cabstar, you find yourself with a lot to get used to. Many of the defining factors that make up the Cabstar’s driving experience stem from its design as a forward control vehicle. A forward control vehicle is one with its steering rack positioned ahead of the front axle. This layout gives the Cabstar a super-tight turning circle of 9.6m and positions the driver right at the front of the vehicle with an unrestricted view through the vast windscreen. This is great for easing the Cabstar in and out of tricky situations but it also means that you’re sitting on top of the axle and every imperfection in the road surface can seem like it’s bei