Gadgetory

Nissan calls the new Pathfinder the next generation SUV that's basically code for we've largely given up on offroad but for most of their buyers I bet that the bullseye let's check out the 2013 Pathfinder in 4-wheel Drive trim and platinum level check the tax now the last pathfinder was just a horrid looking thing like something the Pentagon would put out an RFP for this is a pretty boy you can see it's got a lot of the DNA from the Infiniti JX and under the skin things are different as well no longer body-on-frame it's now a unibody vehicle like a car in fact it shares a platform with the Murano and the Maxima the big engines are going to used to get a four liter v6 or a 5.6 v8 no more now single engine three and a half liter v6 an old standby if you're having trouble spotting the new generation Pathfinder just look for the second row door handles for the first time ever they're not on the c-pillar they're down on the door inside this thing is infinity everywhere yeah it's a Nissan but they've really brought a lot of infinity cues up in a lot of Nissan's lately and this one gotten a huge dose of it here are the things to look for in the center of the two dials you've got this nice LCD screen not that crunchy 8-bit nonsense that Nissan did forever ruining their dashboards beautiful gauges as well look over here that's the Infinity controller we've seen showing up in Nissan's for a model year or two with a rotating ring an enter button in the center and these compass buttons around that all of this is infinity stuff as is this sort of dual dog-bone layout of the climate controls below it there in the audio settings now since we have the Platinum trim here we have some nice features in the dash the navigation system is one of them you don't get that in every Pathfinder as you might imagine beyond that nothing really new here we've seen this sort of look of map it'll give you all kinds of different views there's a great bird's eye view but it's still it's a little childish to me and sometimes the streets are incredibly tortured they haven't done a great job of calling out a lot of those street labels in this current generation which goes back years now and if you don't want to use the controller or the dedicated buttons or the touchscreen because you're picky that way you can always use the voice command which is I'd say basic but very robust would you like to access both navigation navigation please say address address what's stayed please for Canada California California notice how fast I can whip through an address there but I still have to do it bucket style one little module at a time but there's excellent voice prompt commands on the screen so I want to memorize some stupid syntax that's a good thing also on this car we've got an elaborate camera system which is weird because we're missing some other technologies for driver assistance but not camera if I put this guy in Reverse look what I get I've got a rear camera I've got the around view monitor all four angles around the vehicle and if I the camera button again I get this sort of down corner look at the right front wheel so you've got an amazing richness of cameras on this vehicle that's part of this platinum trim level that's for the entertainment system you've got just about everything you care about and all you're missing are things you don't care about with the exception of HD radio I was surprised to not find HD radio on this vehicle standard or optional AM an FM and satellite radio of course are in there Sat radio is very responsive in this guy by the way it clicks up the information for a new station like that which I like under the aux menu here you're going to find your auxiliary inputs as you can see audio and video are available there's CD and/or DVD here in this slot and bluetooth streaming has good meta tag support we also have a rear seat entertainment system on this guy that's a little something out of the 90s you got dual screens in the back that can watch a DVD or a portable plugged in through RCA jacks but the kids are gonna have an iPad they're never gonna use that don't waste your money now when it's you know having suburban eyes roll the Pathfinder is nothing if not a people haulers so let's see how people get in the third row as you see I got a nice big hole right here to do that if that's too complicated to make happen it's not worth it let's see how easy it is there's one big lift latch on the shoulder of the seat to pull that up and just push the whole myth's forward now I got one over here as well that's actually quite easy it gives you a real hole once you get back here you find a bench reminiscent of the one in the reformatory and Oliver Twist puts the bear doesn't here I must say Nissan deserves yet another award for this implementation of their legendary v6 in this case for ugliest engine bay it's just a sea of cheap black plastic so again people who buy this thing aren't gonna be engine aficionados and they've gone to the well for the company's standard three and a half liter v6 pathfinders used to have either a four liter v6 or a big old 5.4 liter v8 both gone smaller engine but 260 horse 240 foot-pounds of torque moves this roughly forty four hundred pound beast up to sixteen around seven and a half seconds the Sun doesn't actually publish a number while delivering 19 25 mpg and that's all wheel drive that's a pretty good number for the size and weight of this vehicle being lugged around by this engine if you go with two-wheel drive you get a little bump in mpg to 2026 and I'm in treated they looked at a number of engine components relatively high in the engine bay this this upper level of the air intake for example is way up here this is kind of off-road technique when you want a vehicle to for deep water only time this thing is gonna Ford deep water is when a water main breaks at the ball so what's it like driving a 13 Pathfinder it's like a big ol bowl of vanilla ice cream it's very vanilla interestingly it's one of the few vehicles I've seen lately whose automatic transmission we'll talk about that in a minute does not have a shiftable gate or a sport mode or paddles now this is not truly an automatic it's a continuously variable transmission and I'm ready to pronounce it perhaps the best ever made when I got in this car and I always do my blind taste test when I first get into a car that comes in our garage I don't look at any of the data I Drive it first I could have sworn this with an automatic with actual gears it is not and that's a testimony to how firm and direct and sort of responsive it is so nice job on the CVT but Nissan's always done that power delivery is perfectly good as well but there's something urgent or responsive about it so it's a vehicle that feels like it's sort of not a driver's vehicle in any condition whatsoever the handling is pretty wall away it's not you know not dangerously so but anyway shape or form let's talk about room inside this is a nice spacious vehicle now which was one of the knocks against the earlier generations of Pathfinder real spacious lots of elbow and shoulder and Headroom if I look back over the corner dreadful blind spots and the far corners but the sides are nice and nice and open for good visibility okay let's price a 2013 Pathfinder platinum trim pretty much near the top of the stack about $42,000 now I'd add to that the Platinum Premium Package 2300 more it's gonna get you that very cool panoramic glass roof over second and third row tri-zone climate control fewer arguments about that on long road trip and the largely useless rear seat entertainment system I'd like to pull that out let it's part of the package the deal is pretty good overall so all in it's a prettier Pathfinder it's car base it has a one choice smaller engine retains credible all-wheel drive and much better fuel economy nothing impressed me about driving it but that isn't the point in this guy it hauls people and stuff well while being very suburban and that's gonna be a bull's-eye on the intended buyer