When you’re good at making cars, you can take a break and start drawing other vehicles. This is Nissan’s case: the designers stopped drawing cars for a while, sketching instead a bobsleigh.
It’s not a regular one. In fact, it’s very special: it’s the world’s first 7 seater bobsleigh! How they did it? They say that the source of inspiration was the X-Trail, which resembles in some aspects: overall design, with bold front headlamps, the number of seats and the 360 degrees view, like the Nissan X-Trail’s Around View Monitor system. Then, the excellent capabilities on ice link both vehicles: let’s not forget ALL MODE 4×4-i system that allows X-Trail to keep control on every slippery surface.
From drawing to track it was only a step. So, collaborating with several bobsleigh experts, they built it and made the first test on the Olympic track at Innsbruck, Austria. It came up that, being piloted by Sean Olson, a British Olympic medallist, it exceeded 100km/h and, more impressive, achieved 4.5G forces. This performance couldn’t be possible without the involvement of the sport expert Ian Richardson and bobsleigh manufacturer Diego Menardi. The 50 years of combined experience allowed them to handcraft the X-Trail Bobsleigh, starting from sketches and computer aided design.
After finishing the preliminary tests in Austria, Nissan unveiled X-Trail Bobsleigh’s size and it’s dynamic results: height – 850mm, length – 4200mm, gross weight – 895kg, kerb weight – 310kg, 0-100km/h – 30s, top speed – 105km/h.
