No diesel X-TRAIL Down Under

Nissan Australia says it won't be offering a diesel X-TRAIL for sale in Australia when the new model arrives later this year. The official word came during the international launch of new X-TRAIL in Greece last week.

To be released with petrol and high and low-spec Renault-sourced turbodiesel engine options in Europe, the X-TRAIL line-up for Australia will remain as petrol only "at this stage".

Nissan Australia's marketing manager Ross Booth told the Carsales Network at the launch that there was no business case for the company to offer a turbodiesel X-TRAIL in Australia.

"Our figures show compact SUV buyers in Australia are not asking for diesel. We don't believe there's a market for it," Booth said.

"Different markets develop over time and the [Australian] diesel market right now is in medium and large SUVs where it makes a lot of economic sense to have a diesel."

This contrasts from the company's direction in the European market, where sales of diesel compact SUVs are flourishing.

"There is no [mainstream] diesel compact SUV in Australia, even though they've been available. X-TRAIL has had a diesel [available overseas] for some time, so has CR-V and RAV4… No one's done it because we don't believe there's a market here. It may develop over time but we want to concentrate X-TRAIL where we know there's a market, and that market is in petrol."

The X-TRAIL will be offered locally with the 2.5-litre petrol engine, as used in the outgoing model, matched to either six-speed manual or continuously variable automatic transmissions (CVT). The 2.5-litre has been revised for the new model, yielding slight improvement in performance at 124kW/233Nm.

The new X-TRAIL is bigger in all dimensions (more here) than the previous model but its off-road stats are similar. Ground clearance is now 200mm; approach angle is 29deg and departure 23deg -- this compares to 28deg and 25deg respectively for the outgoing X-TRAIL.

Nissan's 'intelligent' 4X4 system for X-TRAIL now incorporates hill start and descent control functions for the new model. These features were demonstrated on a modest off-road track on the launch.

Check back for our review of the new Nissan X-TRAIL later this week.

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