26 August 2025

Conspicuous consumption is taken to heady heights in the (slightly updated) Nissan Patrol

31 August 2025 | By James Coleman

The Nissan Patrol Ti Warrior cresting a steep hill on Bullen Range Road without a sweat from either car or driver. Photo: James Coleman.

You need thick skin to drive around the city in a car like this. Sorry, car’s the wrong word – ‘enormous monument to dinosaurs’ would be more apt.

There’s the fact the Nissan Patrol is intrinsically, flauntingly big. In my Warrior spec – which is almost an Australian-made car in that it’s fettled by Victoria-based engineering firm Premcar – it measures more than five metres long and nearly two metres high. In traffic, it feels downright antisocial.

Then there’s the noise. Because underneath this hulking great body, like a caged animal in the Coliseum, lives and breathes a 5.6-litre petrol V8.

This means it’s shocking on fuel. You think it’s quite good – because the needle doesn’t exactly race towards empty – until you realise it’s a 140-litre tank and it costs $100-plus just to fill half of it with 91 (98 is recommended for “maximum performance”). During my highway and city driving, I recorded an average of 16 litres per 100 km.

Technically, it can tow up to 3.5 tonnes braked, but you wouldn’t – not without having your own personal oil tanker moored just offshore.

So what is the Patrol for? I don’t know. Apart from putting a massive grin on your face, it causes eyes to roll in the faces of everyone within earshot.

It is also getting on a bit. For 2025, Nissan has now included a touchscreen on the top of the dash where a little glovebox used to be, and tinkered with the suspension and … yeah, called it a day.

If you’re wondering why the styling looks a little dated, and why – despite the quilted effect and the leather – the seats still aren’t heated, that’s why. This is effectively still a 2023 car. An actually ‘new’ Patrol is still a year away, and it makes a major change by binning the V8 for a twin-turbo petrol V6.

But again, for what it’s for, this one is great. For starters, at $105,160 plus on-road costs, it falls well below the price of the Toyota LandCruiser GR Sport, at $144,791, and the Lexus GX Overtrail, at $122,250.

Photos: James Coleman.

It also means that while it has all the usual suite of modern safety tech, like lane-keeping assistance and rear-cross traffic alert, none of it is annoying.

On the road, yes, it’s boaty. Boaty McBoatface boaty. And that V8’s chief task is shifting 2.8 tonnes, so you’re not going anywhere particularly quickly – 0-100 km/h takes 7.3 seconds, to the point you will lose to a BYD Shark ute at traffic lights (don’t ask how I know).

You’ll roast it on the drama front though, because the Patrol Warrior’s cherry on top is not, in fact, the bright red bash plate – with its stencilled ‘Warrior’ lettering – or even the chunky black plastic cladding, or the fat all-terrain tyres, or the 50 mm of extra ride height over the regular Patrol. It’s the sound.

The Patrol, you see (and hear) has side pipes. Oh yes, be still my exploding chest hairs. They’re only on the driver’s side, and most of the exhaust is still plumbed out the back, but it lets enough pass to make your head swim in the glorious, snarling racket that only a V8 can produce. It’s enough to make you forget about the fuel bill on the other side, in fact.

Pretty sure it doesn’t have to be red, but we’re glad it is. Photo: James Coleman.

Off-road, I’ve never driven a machine so unflappable. We took it along Bullen Range Road in the ACT’s Cotter Reserve – with its scary signs about how it’s “unsuitable for 2WD” and rocky ruts, slushy sand, and steep, shaley inclines to prove they’re not lying – and the Patrol shrugged off all of it.

Only once did we engage the rear diff lock – when we became slightly bogged in the river. But even then, it walked out, like David Pocock from his morning river dip (not that he’d join the queue for a Patrol, unless it goes electric).

Of course, there is clever software like ‘Sand’ and ‘Snow’ and ‘Rock’ settings, but honestly, I think the combination of its tyres and perfect front and rear overhangs did most of the heavy lifting. The coil springs are also as thick as your thighs (OK, not mine, Pocock’s).

Photos: James Coleman.

You’re pleasantly cossetted from all of this inside, in your wide leather seats, and air-conditioning vents spread the full length of the eight-seater cabin. There’s space to rival a Kia Carnival, too.

So if you have many children, and your daily commute to the oil fields has Mount Kosciuszko in the middle of it, this is the car for you. So yeah, still pointless. But so brashly brilliant. Dinosaurs did not die in vain.