Our Four Seasons Nissan Cube plays while the sun shines. ITH ITS YOUTHFUL SHAPE, cheery
paint, and fun-house interior, the Nissan Cube is unquestionably the adolescent of our Four Seasons fleet. So as the hot weather hit, the Cube was quick to escape its daily commuting duties for a summer vacation. In June, associate web editor Jeffrey Jablansky made a banzai run from Ann Arbor to Newport, Rhode Island, via New York City, and then back to Michigan in one weekend. Considering its aerodynamic ambivalence, the Cube instilled a new respect in Jablansky for its composure over 1600 highway miles. As he observed, “The Cube did a better job of staying in its designated lane than our departed Four Seasons Honda Fit, which has a much more sleek shape.” The Nissan’s upright design does create some visibility issues, although not as you’d expect. At night, the excellent headlights illuminate a broad patch of road, but the vertical side windows create distracting reflections in your peripheral vision from both passing vehicles and the Cube’s instrument panel. The Cube headed east again less than a month later, this time landing in the suburbs of New York City, where the Nissan would spend three weeks of its summer with senior editor
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Joe Lorio and New York bureau chief Jamie Kitman. Again, the Cube quickly dispelled any notions that something so cheap, so small, and so square couldn’t possibly manage itself on the highway. “A CVT is unlikely to set an enthusiast’s heart alight, but it does make for pretty relaxed highway cruising, spinning at
Automobile | December 2010
True PDF release: storemags & fantamag
