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2014 Nissan Rogue

When I first started in this whole automotive journalism biz, I held a sort of hodgepodge receptionist/gopher/production assistant role, and each morning as the staff filed in, I'd ask them how they liked whatever car they were assigned to drive the previous night. Most of my colleagues would regale me with anecdotes about how good or bad a vehicle was, but one co-worker, every single morning, would answer my query with the exact same phrase: "It was fine."
I always assumed this was just a brush-off, an "ask me again after I've had a cup of coffee" sort of response. But then I found myself in a similar moment of brevity following the launch of the 2014 Nissan Rogue earlier this week. After returning home, a friend asked me what I thought of the new Rogue, and I replied, word for word, "It was fine."
And, well, it was. Nothing worth wasting exclamation points over, good or bad. Aside from something like the interesting-to-drive Mazda CX-5 or funky-looking Jeep Cherokee, nothing in this class really tries to set the world on fire. And that, right there, is fine. Nissan doesn't need to do anything crazy with its second-generation Rogue. It just needs to offer a well-equipped crossover that's handsome, functional, efficient and priced right - sticking to the same formula that made the first-generation model so successful while offering the latest crop of creature comforts in a more modern package.

Nissan GT-R drag races Swiss fighter jet

Proving that speed is fun in any language, Nissan's German arm recently pitted a GT-R up against an ex-Swiss Air Force fighter jet, called the Hawker Hunter. Now the idea of a car-versus-plane drag race is nothing new, but this is the first time we can recall a GT-R being involved.
While this Nissan video is almost a month old, we're pretty sure you won't be disappointed by the action, which shows the two high-speed machines racing along the two-kilometer runway. We don't want to ruin the suspense, so scroll down for the latest matchup of sports car versus fighter jet.

NYC Taxi of Tomorrow ruled legal by appeals court

The streets of New York City might be filling up with a lot more Nissans in the next few years. A New York appeals court ruled that the city's mandate to replace old taxis with a fleet entirely made up of the Nissan NV200 Taxi of Tomorrow was legal. The decision overturned a previous ruling that decided The Big Apple couldn't force cabbies to all purchase the same vehicle.
Justice David B. Saxe wrote the court's opinion saying the Taxi of Tomorrow is a "legally appropriate response to the agency's statutory obligation to produce a 21st-century taxicab consistent with the broad interests and perspectives that the agency is charged with protecting," according to Bloomberg. The Greater New York Taxi Association, the plaintiff in the case, could still possibly attempt a second appeal.
Nissan originally won the 10-year contract estimated to be worth about $1 billion in 2011, beating out Ford and a Turkish company. Under the Taxi of Tomorrow plan, all New York cabbies would have to switch to the NV200 within three of five years of the van going into service, and it would replace the 16 vehicles previously authorized as taxis. In 2013, the mandate received multiple challenges though, including an attempted ban by cab drivers because the replacement wasn't a hybrid. In a separate case, state Supreme Court judge Schlomo Hagler decided that there was nothing in the city charter that forced a taxi driver to choose a specific vehicle. This was the case that was just overturned. In the meantime, the automaker has been selling the NV200 to New York cabbies at prices around $29,700.