Dave Moore.

The frameless monocoque Pathfinder may not seem as tough as the old one, but it’s more talented in real life and heads a range of five Nissan crossovers that line up in the showroom like a row of Russian dolls, writes

BY THE end of this year, Nissan will have a choice of SUVs and multipurpose vehicles more extensive than any other maker. It all starts with the wee Juke at the bottom end, a quirky, likeable 1.5-litre CVT four that gets its first facelift in a few months.

Next up are the Qashqai and X-trail which share a C/D platform and get a complete redesign and repositioning this year. The new Qashqai will be a five-seater only but with the same seven-seat wheelbase for massive loadspace, while the X-trail gains seven seats this time around and will offer the tougher AWD powertrain for trail drivers.

Then there’s the Murano, which goes into its third generation soon, but still looks good in series II guise. It drives well, as it should with Nissan’s Z-sportscar V6 engine doing the work, again with a CVT transmission. It too is a four-wheel-drive lifestyler rather than life-changer. At the top of all this, is Nissan’s new Pathfinder, the seven-seat range-topper of the line-up.

It too runs the 3.5-litre Z-car V6 with a creamy-smooth CVT and it’s designed to appeal to a new Crossover/SUV customer, who doesn’t exactly require a truck, but may well tackle something a bit more intrepid than shopping and the school run on occasion.

In order to create the new Pathfinder, Nissan in the US focused on what wasn’t needed in the new car as much as what was.

Previously the Pathfinder was effectively a station wagon based on the trusty Navara ute, offering diesel and petrol power and a full ladder frame.

Being built in and for the US, the new Pathfinder from Alabama eschews the weight, complexity and space-sapping tendency of a ladder chassis so that it is as much a people-mover as a crossover per se, and it’s no coincidence that Ford has gone through the exact same exercise with its Explorer, which is now a transverse front or all-wheel-drive prospect with more room for up to seven or eight people than its rather cramped predecessor.

The prospect of a load-bearing monocoque also means that crossovers built this way can achieve sedan-like impact safety standards, which is something that trucks in the US don’t by law actually need to offer now, though they will, soon.

Visually, the new Pathfinder has lost the square-rigged style of the old model, replacing it with a softer wagon-like profile, with nicely blistered wheel-arches and 18-inch alloy rims on every version. It’s all capped-off at the front with a square chrome intake grille that offers a nod to its truck-based predecessor. It’s gentler on the eye, and the family and the dog took a liking to it immediately. If our dog doesn’t take to a car she has to be picked up and lifted in, with the Pathfinder, Ruby just cleared its tow-bar in a single bound.

So it does look different. Inside the effect is immediately obvious, the seven-seat cabin has an airiness that the old car never had, the rearmost seats were easier to use and stow and appeared to be built for big people, not just children, which we guess is something else we can thank the car’s USsourcing for – the ‘‘Burger Percentile’’ and all that.

The Tuscaloosa sourcing ensures that all our Pathfinders are loaded with equipment, though you don’t get sat-nav in any of the three models on offer. The range consists of two and

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