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NEW VEH ICLE NissaN Evalia

The indian market has seen a lot of pull towards utility vehicles of late, what with the Mahindra XUv500 and the

Renault Duster setting the industry abuzz. in such a scenario, Nissan india’s newest offering – the Evalia MUv –

is being slotted as an ‘innovative urban class Uv’ that provides an exciting and uniquely modern twist to urban

mobility in india. We drove the seven-seater to find out if it has the necessary means to change the way urban

india drives.

NISSAN evAlIA — PRACTICAL PEOPLE CARRIER

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INTRODUCTION

Based on Nissan’s famed B platform, the Evalia is a moniker used for India alone, while in Europe, the Multi Utility Vehicle (MUV) does duties under the NV200 badge. The company sells the vehicle in passenger and commercial variants in Europe, as well as other mar-kets. For now though, India only gets to see the passenger variant.

Since its launch at the end of 2009, Nissan has delivered over 120,000 units of the NV200 to customers in over 40 countries, including new markets like Indonesia and Malaysia. The company expects Evalia to push sales, and thus its marketshare in the Indian context. This is Nissan Motor India’s (NMIPL) third locally-built product, and like its offering in the sedan segment – Sunny, the company hopes to make an impact in a segment ruled by the Toyota Innova. While the Mahindra Xylo, Chevy Tavera or Maruti Ertiga competes in the same segment, Toyota hasn’t really been threatened in terms of space, comfort or versatility the Innova offers.

That is a space Nissan would like to exploit with the Evalia, with what it claims to be unrivalled spaciousness and flexibility. What it needs to build though is reliability in addition to features, fuel efficiency and overall running cost.

DESIGN, BUILD & DRIVABILITY

The overall looks of the Evalia is not something that would make you stand and take notice. Yet, the front looks styl-ish and futuristic, with a flowing line travelling right through the B-pillar to the base of the grille. The bulging wheel arches accentuate the swept-back head-lamps. The side profile and the rear, however, look bland in comparison. The small tail lamps on the square-shaped rear don’t do much to the Evalia’s over-all looks. Indians are known for their penchant for vehicles that look good from the exterior, and it waits to be seen how they react to the Evalia, when it drives down the road.

Nissan officials we spoke to, explained the role design plays in vehi-cles like Evalia, which is expected to address multiple market needs. While in

Europe, OEMs offer commercial vehicles with strong three-dimensional body fea-tures, in China people use vehicles like the Evalia for both work and leisure. In India, the company expects its custom-ers to be male with annual income in excess of ` 15 lakh, and with children in their pre-teens or teens.

The original design was created by a global product development team, led by Japanese and French designers. On the exterior, the brief was to focus on the front-end for maximum visual impact, while their job was to create an open feeling inside the cabin.

Nissan uses a unitary-body or mono-coque construction for the Evalia, mak-ing it stronger, lighter, and cheaper; hence, a better engineering solution than a body-on-frame design used for the Innova and Xylo. Compared to the Innova, the Evalia is about 200 kg lighter at 1,426 kg. It is also somewhat smaller in dimensions as against the Innova. Lengthwise, the Evalia is 180 mm shorter, while the Innova is wider by 75 mm. However, it is taller by 125 mm in comparison to the market leader. Evalia scores in ground clearance as well, with 180 mm to the Innova’s 176 mm.

For the suspension, Nissan uses McPherson strut in the front, while at the rear, it has a leaf-spring and rigid

axle layout, with oil-filled dampers. The use of leaf springs at the rear is a rare feature in passenger vehicles, and is most commonly used on load-carrying CVs. The combination nonetheless, offers good ride quality on practically all the terrains we covered during the test drive – city, highway and hills.

For the size of the vehicle, the 14-inch wheels, with 165R14, 8PR tyres appear too small. While it’s clear that the company decided to use smaller tyres to extract the best fuel efficiency from the unit, to our mind 185 mm-sized tyres would be a good fit.

In terms of driveability, the Evalia feels compact and sedan-like. For its size, the vehicle is easy to manoeuvre, but there is some bit of body roll as well, owing to the raised ground clear-ance and high centre of gravity.

INTERIOR

The Evalia is roomy, practical and all-plastic, with no hint of chrome or wood veneers in the cabin. The layout of the dashboard is simple and symmetric. The colour combination of beige and brown goes well with the matt plastic used, and Nissan engineers have done a good job at the cabin’s fit and finish quality.

Boxy rear design coupled with small and skinny tyres project a goods mover look

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NEW VEH ICLE NissaN Evalia

The steering wheel is borrowed from Nissan’s Micra hatchback, but it goes well with the overall look and feel of the Evalia dashboard.

The tall seating position, and wide front doors, gives the driver a good front and rear view of the road. All the controls on the dashboard are easily accessible, barring the gear-shifter, which is mounted on the dashboard, and needs some time to get used to. Mounting of the gear shifter on the dashboard offers Nissan engineers ample scope to utilise the space available between the front seats.

What is strange though is the lack of a cover on the glovebox. We experi-mented by putting in our wallets and phone, and on bumps they tend to drop-off often. The other notable omission

from the front is a USB port on the music system.

The side panels have been kept flat, to give more space inside the cabin – a necessity for vans with three rows of seats. The rear doors slide on rails, and offers generous ingress and egress space for commuters. The second row bench seat flips forward to allow access for passengers to the third row. On offer is a 60:40 split ratio in the Evalia’s second row of seats, while the third row splits and folds 50:50. There is enough lug-gage space even with all three rows in place. The large hatch door extends all the way down to the rear bumper, offer-ing a low loading height for luggage. Although that is a practical and thought-ful feature, it eats into how the rear

looks from the outside.There is no provision for the second

row to be moved forward or backwards to create extra legroom. The third row too is only good for children or adults that are not too tall.

POWERTRAIN & SAFETY

The engine used on the Evalia is the 1.5 l dCi (diesel Common-rail injection) K9K unit, manufactured by Nissan’s partner, Renault. To Indian consumers, this would be a familiar engine, as it has found its place in many of Nissan and Renault products in India, such as the Fluence, Duster and Sunny. Although the same unit is capable of

interior cabin is functional but the porportion of grey seems overdone

Rear lamps break the monotony of straight lines alloys feature a nice design by segment standardsFront headlamp bears a sharp and purposeful look

Bottle holder for third row passengers

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producing 110 hp of peak power, what is offered on the Evalia is 85 hp @ 3,750 rpm, and 200 Nm of torque at 2,000 revs per minute. The K9K is a family of inline-four turbocharged diesel engines, first produced in 2001.

In terms of displacement, the Evalia engine is a good 1,000 cc less compared to the ones available on the Innova or Xylo. However, it doesn’t feel under-powered and can do maximum speeds of about 130-140 km/hr. The engine is transversely-mounted, and powers the front wheels through a five-speed man-ual gearbox. The shift quality of the gears on the vehicle we drove was a bit notchy, but that could be a one-off expe-rience. What counts though is the 19.3 km/l fuel average the Evalia claims, as certified by ARAI.

At city speed ranges, there is consider-able engine noise that creeps into the Evalia cabin, primarily because of a lot of empty space available in the engine bay, under the hood, and the unit’s closeness to the cabin. The noise decimates once the vehicle reaches cruising speeds.

In terms of safety, Nissan has offered ABS (anti-lock braking system), EBD (electronic brake-force distribution) and BA (brake assist) as standard in all the four variants of the Evalia – XE, XE +, XL and XV – and so are immobilisers and door ajar indicators. Barring the base variant, driver and front passenger airbags are offered on all other variants. The last two rows get three-point seat-belts as well.

ROUND-UP

For all practical purposes, the boxy looks and sliding doors give the Evalia a com-

mercial van look. Although the company believes buyers of the Evalia would use it for personal use, it is to be seen how the vehicle is received in households. Price-wise, the Evalia has been slotted between the Innova on the upper side, and the Xylo and Ertiga on the lower spectrum, at a range of ` 8.49-9.99 lakh, ex-showroom, New Delhi. The ease of driving, coupled with flexible seating, standard safety fea-tures, and better fuel efficiency compared to competition should make the Evalia an attractive proposition.

However, there are certain things that would not miss out a prospective cus-tomer’s sight. The sliding doors on the side get butterfly windows that open just about a couple of inches at the rear-end. A regular roll-down window would be a welcome change to many. There are no AC vents for the middle row pas-sengers, while there is just a single AC vent on the third row.

What should work for Nissan though is its brand value, and customers in the

know are likely to bank on a global brand, when it comes to personal mobil-ity. And especially, with Ashok Leyland – Nissan’s joint venture partner for light commercial vehicles – scheduled to introduce Stile, a rebadged version of the Evalia, for commercial application, Nissan should be hoping for good num-bers from this ‘urban class UV’.

TExT: Deepangshu Dev sarmah

PhOTO: Bharat Bhushan Upadhyay

K9K powers multiple Renault-Nissan products

sliding doors make ingress and egress a breeze even in tight parking spots

Boot space with third row seats upavailable boot space with seats down

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