1999 Nissan Sentra Sedan on 2040-cars

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Nissan's Carlos Ghosn taps the brakes on autonomous car progress

"Self-driving cars remain a long way from commercial reality."
Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn shocked the automotive industry last year when he announced that his company plans to offer consumers an autonomous car by 2020. The automaker even showed off its self-driving Leaf prototype as proof. He was bolder recently with the pronouncement that select markets could have them in 2018, if laws allowed. The boss' optimism appears to be waning, though, and he's now sounding a lot more conservative about the future. While driverless vehicles are still on the way, Ghosn is hedging his bets with a more gradual implementation of several systems.

Nissan rowed the Note ashore [w/video]

Normally we wouldn't suggest trying to float your car on water, but Nissan has made some modifications to turn its new Versa Note hatchback into a makeshift rowing shell.
Nissan replaced the car's rear seats with a sliding rear rowing seat, modified the doors to open wider at 90 degrees and fitted a pair of oars. Most importantly, they put the whole thing on a floating platform to keep it from sinking into Eton Dorney Lake, the site of the 2012 Olympic rowing competitions in England (where the car is simply known as the Nissan Note).
Then they invited medal-winning competitive rowers Helen Glover, Sophie Hosking and Polly Swann to come along and row the thing, making use of the around-view monitor system to see where they were going. All in all it may not be quite as cool as the boats which Fiat made out of the 500 or Mini made out of its convertible, but it's still enough to float our boat. Check it out in the video clip and press release below and the image gallery above.

Nissan 'Ride of Your Life' campaign turns an Altima into a race car [w/video]

Nissan definitely makes some exciting vehicles. The GT-R has received continuous improvements to keep it at the head of the pack in the performance car world. And the Leaf might not bring driving intensity, but its technology is quite impressive. However, there is nothing especially thrilling about the Altima. Granted, it races in the Australian V8 Supercars series, but that car really only shares its basic shape with the production version. So it may see surprising that the Japanese automaker is hoping to inject some drama into its midsize sedan with its new Ride of Your Life ad campaign.
The project is pretty clever. Nissan invited several people to the Horse Thief Mile circuit at Willow Springs Raceway for a ride in an Altima racecar. After a few laps with a professional driver around the course, they pulled into the pits, and the passengers got a big surprise. We won't spoil what happens for you. You can check it out in the video below.
The concept is somewhat similar to Toyota's thrill ride ads for the Camry last year. Both promotions try to show that that these four-door, family sedans can be more than just boring transportation. Nissan's commercials will begin airing on TV soon. The automaker hopes to excite potential Altima buyers ahead of its upcoming national sales event. Scroll down to watch the video to find out the big secret and read the full release about the campaign.