Nissan S-Cargo: The Crazy Quirks

a few weeks ago I told you about my new Nissan escargot for those of you who didn't see that video the escargot is this weird 1980s Japanese imported van thing that's called the escargot because it looks like a snail and the French word for snail is escargot I'm serious now a lot of you wanted to see more of the escargot so in this video I'm going to take you on a little tour and show you all of its quirks there are many of them we'll start with the most obvious and the most annoying quark the chyme now back in the 1980s the national speed limit in Japan was 100 kilometers an hour or 60 miles an hour and the government required every automaker to install a chime in every vehicle that alerts you if you happen to be going the lightning-fast speed of 61 miles an hour take a listen as long as you're going over sixty miles an hour that noise never turns off try driving this thing on the highway for a couple of hours you'll quickly find that that noise is the single most annoying thing of all time interestingly that's not the s car goes only annoying chime it also sounds a chime when you shift into reverse not on the outside of the car to warn people that you're coming but on the inside to let you know that you're in Reverse the escargot also has a few other annoying corks for example the radio goes from 76 to 90 let me explain what I mean you know how we listen to 103.1 or 104.5 not in the escargot it's radio goes from 76 to 90 so you can't listen to those stations but if you want to hear the static on 77 point - be my guest then there's the mirrors unlike most mirrors the whole assembly moves and they don't exactly click into place so you're driving along on the highway and the wind sort of gradually pushes them down over time so what you have to do is you have to roll down the window and put them back up and then over time the wind continues to push them back down so then you roll down the window and put them back up really it's a blast speaking of the windows let's talk about them the windows are separated into two pieces there's the upper part which is fixed and then the lower part which you roll up and down they're very weird and so is the windshield which is sort of curved back in fact there's such unusual pieces that supposedly Nissan escargots glass replacements are absolutely impossible to find another annoyance the fuel tank is only seven gallons and this thing has a three-speed automatic which means that it's working incredibly hard and burning a ton of fuel just to get you going 60 miles an hour on the highway for proof this weekend I went to Cars and Coffee 80 miles away I filled it up before I left drove there on the way back before I left I had to fill it up again and now I'm back and it's now at half a tank again the s car goes other big annoyance is also a problem with a lot of right-hand drive cars that have been imported from Japan specifically the turn signals and the windshield wipers are switched so if you use your left hand to put on the turn signal actually the windshield wiper comes on and if you use your right hand stick and you're gonna put on the wiper actually the turn signal comes on this is kind of annoying and it's something you have to constantly be thinking about or else you'll just look like that idiot driving around in that van that looks like a snail who always wipes his windshield for no reason but the quirks of this car are at all annoying some of them are just weird for example the shifter Nissan clearly designed this car to have a shifter on the dashboard but they didn't have a tiny gear lever to put there so they just took a regular Nissan automatic transmission floor shift lever and stuck it on the dashboard there's also the gauge cluster which is almost comically gigantic and the weird single spoke steering wheel which was inspired by the steering wheel in the Citroen 2cv also the spare tire located in the back under the floor no under the passenger seat one brilliant feature everything in this car is manual manual seats manual windows manual locks manual mirrors except the rear tailgate you can unlock it and lock it automatically from the driver's seat why is this brilliant well if you're doing a quick delivery in your escargot you don't have to turn off the car you can just unlock the rear tailgate jump out run around to the back and open it up all without killing the engine or taking out your key it's pretty smart another smart detail here is the S cargoes ashtray and since it would be hard to empty the ashtray if it was just fixed inside the car the entire panel containing it lifts right out so you can easily empty another great escargots design feature owing to its strange proportions it has a ton of headroom I'm 6 foot 3 this is a ruler I'm gonna put it upright on my head and it still doesn't touch the roof I also love how narrow it is want to get a tollbooth ticket or go through the drive-thru at a fast-food restaurant even though you're in a right-hand drive car no problem of course not everything about the S car goes dimensions is beneficial it is taller than it is wide which means a quick turn could also mean a quick roll over and the rollover risk isn't the only problem with the S car goes dimensions at only 139 inches long the escargot doesn't really have enough room for a backseat but it has one anyway with only a few little problems for example the back seat doesn't lock into place the back seat has no seat belts and the back seat has no leg room other than that though it's a highly functional and useful back seat so there you go those are all of the S cargoes mini corks and from more of my thoughts on them click the link below to check out my column on autotrader.com slash oversteer and keep following along because I have a lot more plan for the escargot for example next week I'm going to take it to the DMV to register it which should be a blast because we all know how much the DMV loves dealing with weird right-hand-drive imported Japanese cars [Music]

Channel: undefined

Views: 2,262,030

Rating: 4.8773122 out of 5

Keywords: nissan s-cargo, jdm, s-cargo, jdm nissan, nissan, imported nissan, rhd nissan, nissan figaro

Id: Ee8-6DfMEGE

Length: 6min 42sec (402 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 27 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/ArritzJPC96]

Good news about that radio though, the American and Japanese ones overlap at 87.5-90.0, and I think there's like 5 stations in Philadelphia that fit there, so take your pick!

Also, you can probably disable that little chime by unplugging a single wire somewhere.

[u/Crappedinplanet]

It irks me just a tiny bit that Doug hasn't mentioned the that the whole car was inspired by the 2cv, which gives explanation for the French name of the car

[u/AdviceDanimals]

God, I just love the S-Cargo. The concept and name are just so silly. If I become a millionaire, this will be the first car I buy.

[u/DOHCMerc]

/u/doug-demuro Did your GT-R not have that chime?

Are you going to find the wire to that and cut it?

[u/4x420]

Gail the Snail.

[u/needsfuelpump]

The ugliest car /EVER MADE/

[u/[deleted]]

Lol snailin'

[u/rg25]

I love Doug. But I have zero interest in this car past the first video he did. Looking forward to more viper videos and his next car!