2017 Nissan Armada Intro In Chicago

MORE INFO:See all of the 2016 Chicago Auto Show Press Conference; News, Photos and Videos

By Steve Purdy
The Auto Channel
Michigan Bureau

Chicago February 11, 2016; Nissan introduced the new Armada at an off-site venue last night in concert with the Chicago Auto Show. A few hundred journalists and hangers on filed into what appeared to be a converted warehouse where a pretty cool lightshow preceded the reveal of the latest version of this full-size, traditional body-on-frame, 8-passenger SUV.

Built on a global Patrol platform the new Armada gets a fresh, though not revolutionary, exterior, a beautifully upscale new interior and a more powerful and sophisticated powertrain. Like all new vehicles these days it also gets all the electronic driver assistance features you can imagine along with my favorite, Nissan’s 360-degree “AroundView” monitor that looks like a camera is mounted 20 feet above the truck.

The invigorated 5.6-liter Endurance V8 now gets 390 horsepower, up from 317 for the previous version. With a truck this size that extra grunt will be welcome. The 7-speed automatic transmission will help keep the fuel economy decent enough, though don’t expect it to be much over 20 on the highway. Towing capacity will be an impressive 8,500 pounds for both the 4WD and 2WD versions reflecting the capability of this truck platform. Most of the competing three-row SUVs, by the way have gone to a uni-body structure that will not allow for such robust towing.

Most impressive is the new interior with much nicer materials and more complex but functional design. From our admittedly limited exploration of the new Armada’s interior we found it impressive. Of course, spending some serious time with it will flesh out our opinion.

Pricing is not yet available but we don’t expect it to be much pricier than the current model, and we’re not sure when we’ll see them at dealer but it shouldn’t be long.

The Complete Nissan Armada Intro Press Release and In-Context News Archive