Pattoso

Everyone is saying that she is an “uncle car” (which means only suitable for those who are 40 years old and above). Is it because of the exterior, interior design, or the price range that she stands at? The first impression she gave me is that she is huge (spacious) and I never think that the exterior design make her an “uncle car”. There are so many good reviews for Nissan Teana that makes me so desperate to try her out one day.

Yes, finally I tried her out on last Saturday. First of all, the branch manager explains some of the features of Nissan Teana 2.5L to me before I try it. 4 airbags, electronic seat for 2 front seats, start-stop button, 16 inches tyres, blah blah blah. Yes, I admit that these are the basic information that a customer need to know but all these we can get it from the official website. But there is one function that catches my eyes, ASC – Adaptive Shift Control. According to the branch manager, you can do a better cornering by switching off the ASC. Unfortunately, I have no chance to try this during my test drive session (no sharp corner in the route I took, so sad).

The intelligent key system is really intelligent enough to impress me. You can open the door, start engine without taking out the key from your pocket. It can do that all within 80cm from the car. You might ask me how if the key runs out of battery? No worry about that, a mechanical key which is kept inside the shell will always be there for you when you need it. 

Blah blah blah again…yes, you are right. We should focus on the driving experience (sorry for that, hehe…).  Power generated from 0-40km/h is a bit disappointing but it is still as what I expected. Undeniably she has lost to Honda Accord in this which is good in acceleration pick up. After the speedometer pass 40km/h, you will start feeling the power of 182 bhp V6 engine. It feels so good until I forgot it was already over the speed limit in a few seconds. It is so quiet inside the car which makes you really enjoy the driving and music from the nice audio system.

Yup, Teana is a big car but she has an excellent handling which I like the most! But I am not sure whether it will be better than Mazda 6 or not (because I haven’t tried out the Mazda 6) but what I can confirm is she is better than Honda Accord and Toyota Camry. In C segment car, she already deserved to have a good mark in this point. The car responds so fast when I want to do a fast overtake. I even can do a 360’ quick turn with one hand only.

There is one problem I found in Nissan Teana. The gear changing is not as smooth as I expected since they mention Teana is using Xtronic CVT technology. The reasons that they gave me is the car I tested came across an accident after a few days the car launch when she tested by a customer and they just get back the car from workshop. And another problem kept blinking on the digital screen at the dashboard is the engine oil need maintenance. I am not sure whether gear changing problem is caused by these factors or it is really not as good as I expected.

After my test drive session, I checked out the trunk of the car. It is so huge but it never take up the rear passenger seats’ space which still giving a huge space for rear passenger seats. Oh ya, I forgot to mention about the driver seat. It is so comfortable for a long haul driving distance and never makes you tired of driving.

I think I should give credit to the Nissan salesperson as well. They are so honest to tell me that there are two choices of registered year that we can choose which are 2010 and 2011. We can do the booking for car year 2011 with the same price as year 2010 (because there will be RM3000-RM4000 mark up in the price for year 2011).

I will give 7 out of 10 points to Nissan Teana 2.5L. It is also the cheapest in C segment car which is only RM168,000 (OTR) for 2.5L, RM138,000 for 2.0L (comfort), RM142,000 for 2.0L (luxury) and RM248,500 for 3.5L.