The Nissan Armada Nismo Manages To Make Driving a Building Fun

As a whole, I don’t pay much attention to the world of performance SUVs. Sure, I’m aware of what’s out there in the segment, solely because in this profession, any new car debuts are hard to avoid. But to say I’m deeply passionate about the latest AMG-badged Mercedes crossover is, well, an overreach.

The concept of a performance SUV is an inherent compromise. Utility vehicles need mass and heavy-duty equipment to do the things people normally expect of them: Move cargo, tow things, and conquer challenging terrain. Mutating such vehicles with high-performance equipment, like stiffer springs, stickier tires, bigger brakes, and more power, usually results in a vehicle that can’t really do many SUV things, but also can’t keep up with the equivalent sports car.

I’d estimate the novelty of fast SUVs wore off nearly a decade ago. By that time, virtually every high-end manufacturer, from BMW to Land Rover to Lamborghini, had at least one sporty SUV in its lineup. And it’s only gotten worse from there. No longer an oddity, high-performance SUVs have become the norm for many carmaker portfolios.

Nissan has been an exception to this rule, at least in America. Sure, it built the few-off, GT-R-based Juke R back in 2015. It also sold the Juke Nismo RS around that time. I’d argue both of those are more tall hot hatches than proper SUVs, though. Overseas, it has the Patrol Nismo, which it has been selling since 2010. But in America, it was only this past August when Nissan finally decided to affix the Nismo badge to a proper SUV: The Armada. I recently spent nearly 3,000 miles behind the wheel to find out if it’s just as compromised as every other big SUV I’ve driven.

Two Trips In One

The driving I had planned for the Armada Nismo was, weirdly, the perfect mix for testing out the SUV’s wide range of promised capabilities. As I laid out in my previous post about this thing, I planned to drive it through the back roads of Pennsylvania and upstate New York with a couple of friends and their sports cars, before turning west to Chicago, where I’d spend my Christmas break with my girlfriend’s family.

The first leg of that plan didn’t exactly go as I expected. My friends and I were supposed to meet up at an Airbnb in Pennsylvania—me bringing the gargantuan, eight-seat Armada, them bringing a BMW M2 and a Porsche 911 Carrera 4S (three equally sporty vehicles, I know). Except, only two of us made it there. The M2 ended up getting a flat tire on the way and had to get flat-bedded back home. So only the Nismo and the Porsche remained. Still, my friend and I weren’t about to let a missing car prevent us from hitting the roads. So that’s exactly what we did.

Though it’s probably obvious to most people reading this, I have to make one thing clear: Just because Nissan added a Nismo badge and some flashy pieces of trim to the Armada does not make it handle like a Z. Sure, Nissan’s added a few things to spice up the handling, like a stiffer air suspension, stickier all-season tires, and a quicker steering rack. But at the end of the day, this is still a three-ton-plus, body-on-frame SUV that’s shaped like a building on wheels. It is not light. It is not nimble. It’s not quick on its feet, no matter how much those red accents and 22-inch forged alloy wheels try to convince you otherwise.

Suffice to say, the Armada Nismo was not able to keep up with the Porsche 911 on Pennsylvania’s finest twisties, despite the extra 35 horsepower coming from its 3.5-liter twin-turbo V6 (for a new total of 460 hp, in case you were wondering). There’s simply too much weight here, both for the engine and the brakes, to get anywhere near the performance of a proper sports car (even one that was 15 years old, as was the case with the Carrera).

My point is, when faced with a set of curvy roads, the Armada is slow. Of course, being slow doesn’t mean it was boring.

While the Armada Nismo might have trouble keeping up with a warm hatchback, I can assure you the driver will still be having a great time. There are a couple of reasons why. First is the inherent joy that comes from flinging around something so massive. It just feels wrong, which is why it’s so fun. You sit so high up, and the SUV takes up so much of the lane. Having to keep up the momentum and stay between the lines is a thrill all on its own. That’s true of most big cars, not just the Armada.

The second reason is the chassis tuning. Nissan did an excellent job with the suspension here, allowing the Nismo to stay composed under loads that the normal Armada wouldn’t normally be subjected to. It doesn’t totally fall apart when faced with a series of switchbacks, which can’t be said for many other vehicles of this size. The steering feel might be virtually nonexistent, but it’s quick enough that you don’t have to constantly make huge inputs. The whole package is good enough that you can pull off tiny powerslides out of slow corners (but not much more, since traction control can’t be totally turned off).

Again, I’m not saying the Armada is now a true back-road carver in Nismo form. In the grand scheme of performance cars, it’s still far from that. But it’s not totally out of its depth in those situations, either. If you want to have fun in it, you can. Just don’t expect to go quickly. Either way, I don’t think most owners will ever really use the SUV in this way. Which brings me to the next 2,000 miles of my test.

The Long Journey Was (Mostly) Trouble Free

After testing the (very low) lateral limits of the Armada Nismo, I traveled back to my home in New York City to pick up my girlfriend for our trip to Chicago for the Christmas holiday (this is the second time I made this trip in a month, for those keeping track). After filling a small fraction of the seemingly endless cargo space with our luggage, we hopped on I-80 and stayed there for about 12 hours.

This 850-mile stretch of mostly open highway gave me a lot of time to appreciate the Armada Nismo’s interior. There are a lot of things I like about this cabin, namely that there is no shortage of buttons. There are real buttons for most of the climate control systems, a real volume knob, real buttons for the transfer case controls, and a physical knob for the drive mode selection. I’d argue Nissan may have gone a bit too far with the buttons, seeing as how even the gear selector is in the form of four buttons (Park, Reverse, Neutral, and Drive/Manual, laid out horizontally at the bottom of the dashboard waterfall). I know it saves space on the console, but a column shifter does the same thing and feels a whole lot better to use.

I also deeply enjoyed the boy-racer upgrades inside. The seats have bright red inserts, and there’s red contrast stitching everywhere you look. There’s even a red stripe at the 12 o’clock position on the steering wheel. Because I needed to be reminded that my three-row SUV is, in fact, a racecar at heart. Silly? Yes. But also playful and fun–something most SUVs aren’t.

What I don’t very much like is the piano black trim, which houses most of the buttons on the dash and the steering wheel. Though some automakers have realized no one wants trim that can be fingerprinted and scratched beyond recognition just a week after taking delivery, it seems Nissan hasn’t received the memo. I also didn’t like it when the backup camera screen froze on the infotainment screen for around five minutes after I left a Wendy’s parking lot, something that didn’t fix itself even after a power cycle (I had to physically get out of the car, lock it, then get back in twice to get the system to reboot). It never happened again, but I’d be remiss not to note it here, as I couldn’t access the infotainment screen or Apple CarPlay for that entire time.

I sort of expected a lot of attention from onlookers when driving this car, but weirdly, I didn’t get any. The giant grille, two-tone wheels, and bright red accents make this Armada look like a tuner special straight from the back page of an obscure Japanese magazine. Yet no one seemed to care. If you’re an owner reading this, rest assured, if I see you at a gas station, I will come up to you and talk to you about your car.

Speaking of gas stations, you’ll be at them frequently. A fuel tank capacity of 23.6 gallons might sound like a lot, but even with conservative, consistent highway driving in clear, cold weather, I only managed to get around 17.5 mpg, according to the onboard computer. So my girlfriend and I were stopping frequently. As I said, this thing is a building on wheels. And moving a building through the air isn’t exactly easy, especially when it weighs as much as 2.5 Miatas.

This Is Gonna Sound Crazy, But It’s A Bargain

As tested, the Armada Nismo I had on loan carried an MSRP of $83,735. The only options were the two-tone paint ($1,450) and the Nismo-branded floor mat package, which also included a first aid kit and some cargo organization equipment ($565). That is certainly a lot of money for a Nissan, but within the very small, niche segment of performance-oriented three-row SUVs, it’s not a bad deal. Let me explain.

Toyota doesn’t sell the Land Cruiser GR Sport (or any full-size Land Cruiser, for that matter) in the United States, so the Armada Nismo has no direct competitor. But it does have a bunch of indirect competitors. The Acura MDX Type S is another sporty three-row, but it’s far less spacious inside and makes about 100 fewer horsepower. On the other end of the scale are cars like the Dodge Durango SRT Hellcat, the Cadillac Escalade V, and the BMW Alpina XB7, which are all more powerful but also much more expensive.

Of the cars mentioned above, the Nissan is probably the second most impressive on a set of twisties (the BMW is especially lovely to drive), and it’s also the second cheapest. Its powertrain isn’t nearly as interesting as either of the supercharged V8 options, but at least the Nismo can still tow 8500 pounds. Combined with the sheer amount of space inside (97 cubic feet with third and second rows folded), it’s a prime choice for track rats who need a tow car that’s just as interesting as their track car.

Is the Armada Nismo still compromised? Yes, definitely. Driving it quickly is like trying to make a Texas Longhorn tip-toe through a corn maze without its horns grazing so much as a leaf. But the silly cosmetic upgrades and legitimately pleasant chassis setup mean there’s still a bit of whimsy here—enough that when I see one on the road, I won’t immediately scoff at the buyer for picking it over a proper sport sedan or wagon.

Top graphic images: Brian Silvestro