Just days after revealing the Titan Warrior, Nissan is putting another Warrior on the front lines. Unveiled at the Montreal International Auto Show, the Rogue Warrior braves the Canadian winter with a secret weapon: a full snow track system that turns it into a crossover snow machine. With warriors like these, Nissan's army will be able to wage war on all types of ground.
The Rogue Warrior is a more official show car version of a concept that Nissan worked on last year. In February 2015, it released video of the tracked "Juke Nismo RSnow" tearing through the snow in Sweden. As far as we know, it didn't show the RSnow at an auto show, though.
The all-new Rogue Warrior is a different story, making its debut at the Montreal show, which seems the perfect venue for a crossover made for snow. Like the Juke RSnow, the Rogue Warrior stands on a set of Dominator tracks sourced from American Track Truck. Each track measures 30 x 48 x 15 in (H x L x W, 76 x 122 x 38 cm) and helps give the crossover 23 inches (58 cm) of ground clearance.
Quebec's Motorsports in Action (MIA) performed the conversion, which also includes suspension modifications, small body adjustments around accommodating the tracks, and the addition of custom snow guards. Beyond that, it's a stock AWD Rogue on snow treads. Nissan says that the Xtronic transmission is really in its element within the conversion, using its wide gear ratio range and rapid shifts at high throttle openings for sharp on-snow performance.
Nissan estimates a top speed of 62 mph (100 km/h) and says that the Rogue Warrior can scale a 45-degree grade. It's clearly not as freeing as a traditional sit-atop snowmobile, but there's certainly something to be said for frolicking through the snow from the comfort of a heated cabin.
The Rogue Warrior is a one-off prototype designed to highlight the Rogue, Nissan's best-selling vehicle in Canada, and advertise Nissan's greater "Conquer all Conditions" crossover family, which also includes the Pathfinder, Murano and Juke. So it looks like few if any of us will get to step behind the wheel, besides Nissan's hand-selected Rogue Warrior driver and 2015 Micra Cup champion Olivier Bédard.
That doesn't mean you can't enjoy some Rogue Warrior action, though. Bédard turns the crossover into a makeshift ski lift in the video below.
Source: Nissan
