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2014 Nissan Elgrand: Japan's King of Luxury Minivans

As a company, Nissan is known for totally different things depending on where you live. If it's Europe, it has to be crossover, America equals cheap sedans and Japan…
2014 Nissan Elgrand 4 photos
Photo: screenshot from Youtube
2014 Nissan Elgrand2014 Nissan Elgrand2014 Nissan Elgrand
In the land of the rising sun, the Infiniti and Nissan brands are intertwined, meaning some Nissan models actually target the luxury market, like the Skyline sedan. The Elgrand is the perfect example of a niche we know very little about. It promises distinguished styling, majestic and sleek design, performance and first class driving comfort.

We've heard that in Japan it's called the "King of Minivans", so naturally, we thought we'd check it out. What you see in the video below is the very best model, the 350Highway STAR Premium with a 3.5-liter V6 engine and 2014 model year updates.

The sliding rear doors are operated electrically at the push of a button while the full leather interior and Shimamoku wood dash seem pulled from an Infiniti Q50. In America, this car would cost somewhere around $55,000.

We tried looking through the official Japanese configurator and it seems Highway STAR models come with LED lighting, 18-inch wheel, dedicated deep wood grain accents with coloured chrome, black leather appointed seats with elaborate amber accents and diamond-shape quilted pattern with special stitches.

This thing is like the Japanese version of the Mercedes R-Class!

So what about the design? Again, this is unlike anything Nissan sells in Europe or America. The grille is almost like the Lexus spindle, except it's wider at the top than at the bottom. Round the back, the taillights are connected into a single piece, similar to Mitsubishi's new Outlander. It seems in Japan they're really keen on having fascias that look wider than they really are and have substantial chrome surfaces.

Video shot by Driver High Channel in Hokkaido:
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About the author: Mihnea Radu
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Mihnea's favorite cars have already been built, the so-called modern classics from the '80s and '90s. He also loves local car culture from all over the world, so don't be surprised to see him getting excited about weird Japanese imports, low-rider VWs out of Germany, replicas from Russia or LS swaps down in Florida.
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