What do a bobsleigh and an X-Trail have in common?

The answer’s: ‘not much’. But that hasn’t stopped Nissan making the effort…

If you opened a dictionary and looked up the meaning of the word ‘tenuous’, we wouldn’t be surprised if the following text read: “Automotive PR department painfully trying to link one of its products to a winter sport for absolutely no discernible reason.”

So here’s Nissan’s take on a bobsleigh.

That’s right; inconceivably, the Japanese carmaker has built a seven-seat version of a sporty sled that’s designed to look like an X-Trail. Please don’t ask why, we have no idea ourselves…

It goes further than the bobsleigh just having seven seats like the SUV. It also has a V-Motion front end designed to look like the Nissan. And – here comes the best bit of desperate linking from the brand – ‘like the bobsleigh, the X-Trail’s sophisticated All Mode 4x4-i system helps the driver keep control even in ice and snow’. Good grief.

Launched at Innsbruck, Austria, and piloted down the Olympic track in Igls by a British Olympic medallist called Sean Olsson, you can watch the X-Trail Bobsleigh in action via the video below; it can do 100km/h and pull 4.5g, which is impressive. So don’t get us wrong, the idea of a seven-seat ice bullet is actually quite cool.

Even if the abysmally tenuous marketing tie-up is anything but.

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