Because the best snow tires are tank tracks
In LA, the temperature doesn’t “fall” to 68 degrees overnight, it “plunges” — and they open the shelters. It’s not windy, either, it’s “Wild Weather!” And if it ever so much as drizzles, the concrete blondes up in every Newschopper 99 bleat about “Storm Watch: 2016” with live updates from the puddle out in the parking lot. Winter is relative, and we’re a bit hyperbolic out here. We know that much of the rest of the country has to deal with actual weather, like snow and stuff, but we panic whenever the sun is not shining.
So it was more than a little ironic that when it came time for us to drive one of the snow-tracked Nissan Winter Warrior concepts that debuted at the Chicago auto show last month, that opportunity came in sunny Southern California.
Did we have any actual snow, we wondered? Yes, it turns out we do, and within a reasonable drive of downtown. Big Bear Lake has three ski areas, and, thanks to a couple recent storms (“STORMWATCH9000!”) they were all still operating in mid-March. Nissan PR maestro Tim Gallagher, through his usual United Nations-like diplomacy and with the writing of what was probably another big, fat check, made a deal with Bear Mountain Ski Area that would tape-off a small corner of that resort’s 748 acres of remnant slush for us to do donuts.
Well, us and some guy named Leno, who was doing a segment on the Winter Warrior for his show “Jay Leno’s Garage.” In fact, just as we pulled up on a snowmobile where the Murano Warrior was parked, covered with slush, Leno, covered in a little less slush, was climbing out of it. This Leno fellow, as you know, is primarily famous for his regular columns in Autoweek magazine. We thanked him for all those columns and talked a little about Hollander Interchange manuals. Then we asked if he had any advice on driving the Warrior.
“Don’t turn the wheel more than three-quarters of a turn,” he said.
Good advice in dragsters, Indy cars and in tracked vehicles. As you can see in the photos, the Murano Warrior is fitted with a set of Dominator Track Systems treads from American Track Truck Inc. of Chassell, Michigan. Chassell is in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (Da Yoop), a veritable paradise of deep snow. They know winter up in Da Yoop and if you ever see a weather anchor panicking up there, you better grab a life jacket.
So we had high hopes that, for less than about 10 grand for the upgrade, our Murano would be pretty much unstoppable in winter, even an LA winter.
Looks cool, drives fun!
At least in theory. Of the three Winter Warrior concepts — Pathfinder, Murano and Rogue — our AWD Murano was equipped with nothing more than the stock 260-hp V6 engine mated to the stock CVT transmission. On paper it looked like the CVT would take up about half the engine’s 240 lb-ft of torque and the track system would take the other half. That was almost correct. There was some torque left to move the Murano around but not much.
The best way to drive one of these, should you ever get the chance (and you should take it if you do) is to keep it floored the whole time. The rig steers better under power and actually goes closest to where you’ve aimed it. Go slow and it tends to bog down. We found it ground all the way down to zero mph on anything steeper than about a 30-degree slope. In the downhill direction we gunned it and actually got up to maybe 30 mph, snow pellets flying everywhere, wipers on, squirrels fleeing for their furry little lives.
If we were engineering one of these, we’d have gone with a much more powerful 4×4, one with a more performance-tuned transmission. But even underpowered, this crazy rig was actually fun. We can imagine being the king of Da entire Yoop in one of these.
All too soon it was over and we were back in a normal car on a normal road. What a great way to say adios to another brutal SoCal winter and hola to another wildfire season.
