Regulars here would know that we have already reported in great detail about the recently unveiled Nissan Terrano. The new Terrano compact crossover is essentially a re-badged Duster and would be soon seen battling with its donor car and the EcoSport.
It may be noted that this isn’t the first time that we are seeing sharing of vehicles between the Indian subsidiaries of Renault and Nissan. The Duster spawning the Terrano is akin to Sunny giving birth to Scala and Micra producing the Pulse.
We aren’t too surprised to see Nissan India deciding to re-badge a Renault vehicle and selling it under its own name, what with the fast heating up compact crossover segment of Indian Car Market? The Duster has already tasted enough success in our country and it is only now, with the advent of EcoSport, that sales of the European crossover have started to suffer. With the Terrano, Nissan wishes to capitalize on the Duster’s plus-points and on the same time, improve on the donor car’s weaknesses.
Nissan India hasn’t yet revealed the engine options and price list of its baby crossover but did give us a chance to have a good look at their upcoming offering.
As we said earlier, the Terrano is essentially a re-badged Duster and here, we have presented a report on the main visual differences between the two cars:
The Front Fascia:
The Terrano’s exterior styling boasts of a totally revised front end, which comprises of a new bumper, slightly revised hood, revised headlights and a new front grille.
As can be seen, the Terrano’s front grille is less wider and has a distinctive Nissan-SUV look to it. The bumpers too have a slight difference between them, with the Terrano getting a body colored treatment around the air dam. The India spec Renault Duster gets dark grey plastic cladding here.
In Profile:
When seen in profile, it can be observed that the Terrano sports a straight crease in the lower half of each side of its body, unlike the Duster which has an inverted-U like crease.
Also, the car gets different looking alloy wheels (kind of love-it-or-hate-it in visual appeal), slightly different roof rails and blacked out B Pillars.
At the rear end:
At the rear end, the Terrano gets a new tailgate, a revised rear bumper and a new set of tail lamps that extend all the way into the tailgate.
On the Inside:
On the inside, the interior panels get different faux wood inserts, a set of rectangular air vents at the centre of dashboard, a revised instrument binnacle and a new ‘Nissan-ised’ steering wheel. The car also seems to have got a different audio system interface.
The Terrano is likely to offer a longer equipment list and will be available in six exterior paint options- Fire Red, Sterling Grey, Blade Silver, Sapphire Black, Pearl White and Bronze Grey exterior body color options.
We feel that the designers at Nissan have done a good job with giving the Terrano its own visual identity and our guess is that the Nissan’s iteration would appeal more to the car buying lot.
What do you say?