[Bill Schmittle]

I'm interested in buying a mini van like the NV200, ford transit, city express, etc. I have a mountain cabin with 7 miles of dirt road access. One mile is sandy wash. I am wondering how the NV200 does in sand and rough dirt roads. I don't drive it daily, but at least once or twice a week, and occasionally in winter.
I drive a mini FWD VW rabbit pickup and it does great on the road and has done great for a dozen years.
I also use the pickup for flea market sales and pull a very small utility trailer 3' x 5'.
I asked similar questions on the ford transit forum and they said the transit was built on a small ford car chassis and probably wouldn't do well off road. What kind of chassis is the NV200 on and do you think it will hold up. I like nissan as I also have a 83 nissan 4x4 truck and it loves the mountain dirt road. Thanks for info in advance.

 

[amckimmey]

I drive my NV200 all around Southwest Utah. I have no problems on the gravel roads around me. There was one time on a very rough turn off I did rub a large rock on the bottom of the van, no damage, no other problems. It has 6 ½″ of ground clearance, with the stock tires. You could put larger tires on it. It seems most people will either be in favor or against putting larger tires on. Mainly because of the weight rating, but just make sure you do your math and don't exceed their rating if you do go larger.
I bought mine new and probably will put larger tires in a couple years.

The only issue I could see if pulling the trailer, people seem to do it. I don't know much about what the actual towing capacity is. I did put a receiver on mine to install bike rack, specifically a Kuat NV2.0 with the 2bike add-on totaling 4 bikes and the Kuat Pivot which is a swing out for the entire thing.
The only issue I have had is ground clearance off the rack it's self.

 

[Fummins]

Old thread, I know. But I don't care.
We have a dozen or so NV200's at my work here in Alberta, Canada. I maintain them all. These hold up ok, I'd recommend some sort of screen or expanded metal to protect the transmission cooler. It's down low behind the rh side of the bumper. We had one that was totally destroyed in one winter. Mostly the drivers fault, driving too fast and too close following sanding trucks.
I'll be one of the guys that recommend's not going with larger tires, at least not excessively large. Because CVT.
I haven't seen a failure in these vans yet but Nissan is not known for having good cvt's. Google it. The worst thing for a transmission, especially cvt is heat.

 

[ChevyNV200]

Old thread, I know. But I don't care.
We have a dozen or so NV200's at my work here in Alberta, Canada. I maintain them all. These hold up ok, I'd recommend some sort of screen or expanded metal to protect the transmission cooler. It's down low behind the rh side of the bumper. We had one that was totally destroyed in one winter. Mostly the drivers fault, driving too fast and too close following sanding trucks.
I'll be one of the guys that recommend's not going with larger tires, at least not excessively large. Because CVT.
I haven't seen a failure in these vans yet but Nissan is not known for having good cvt's. Google it. The worst thing for a transmission, especially cvt is heat.

Interesting... We had 20-25 Chevy and Nissan NV200's starting in 2015 here in Calgary, Alberta.
All fleet vans, all driven hard for commercial use, all loaded all the time with approx 1000lbs full time.
All doing at least 50000km/30000miles per year.

They were all junk. We dumped them all after 2 years.
The biggest issue was the poor fuel economy because they are so underpowered.
The Dodge Caravan with the 3.6L 280HP V6 gets better fuel economy.
We had Dodge Caravans before and went back to them. Dodge is again threatening to discontinue their old out of date but excellent vans.

Numerous CVT failures. The whole JK East Indian tire issues and oddball tire size and spec.
Electrical issues. AC issues. Nissan parts availabilty issues. The Nissan technicians hated them.
All the employees hated them.

Sales of micro and mini vans is quite good in Canada but not of the Nissan NV200. They sell very few here.
Chevy discontinued their NV200 a year or 2 ago due to poor sales.