Why I Turned Down The Chance To Drive The Awesome Nissan Rogue Warrior

"NickMaronese" (NickMaronese)
03/15/2016 at 11:01 • Filed to: Canada, Nissan Rogue Warrior, snow, winter

One of the things I didn’t expect when I took on the role of editor for a major Canadian automotive website was that I’d be tempted to go on all of the manufacturer’s drive events myself.

They show up in my inbox unassumingly, with little more than model names for subject lines, but inside—invites to go, for free, to exotic locales and drive new, (sometimes) exciting cars.

There are a few things that keep me from turning into a perma-jetsetter: if I took half the trips I got invites for, I wouldn’t have time for my other editorial duties, for one. Second, I’m actually generally not interested in new cars or travel (give me local, classic or Jalop rides any day).

But both of those things aside, I really wanted to go to northern Quebec to drive Nissan’s insane Rogue Warrior snow-conquerer, something I’m sure few other people will ever do.

Sure, it’s basically just a Rogue, but I really wanted to find out what something on caterpillar tracks handles like. The event was only two days, so I could surely afford the small break in my work week. Really all the boxes were ticked for me to tell Nissan, Yeah, I’d love to drive your Warrior! —But I didn’t.

That’s because the third thing that keeps me from taking all of the invites is that I have a roster of writers who I know could do a better job than I could putting together the story post-event (it helps that most actually do care about modern cars).

Autofocus ’ Brian Makse – our resident race car driver and Lamborghini connoisseur – immediately sprang to mind when I read the invite, largely because I knew the variety of his driving experience would probably best qualify him for the job.

That plus I knew he could put together !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in action, something not all of our writers can do.

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Sometimes you have to think about the story, not the glory, and I knew this one’d best be served by someone like him.

But damned if I didn’t feel envious as all heck when he came back with that glowing report, saying it was unlike anything even he had driven before. (It’s hard to render Brian speechless, but you can see that happen on video—the Warrior was that cool.)

What do you guys think? Should I have taken the story myself? Would you have?

DISCUSSION (4)

OPPOsaurus WRX > NickMaronese
03/15/2016 at 11:06

aside from maybe your own wedding or birth of a child, there should be nothing that kept you from that, and only after exhausting all possible people who could stand-ins for those events. screw the story, just go thrash a Rogue tank

cletus44 aka Clayton Seams > NickMaronese
03/15/2016 at 11:43

Meh. It’s a minivan without sliding doors that happens to have big tracks under it.

Stef Schrader > NickMaronese
03/15/2016 at 12:00

Makse’s a fun dude. All of you dudes should send yourselves to Austin sometime. (Bring Timbits. I need them.)

NickMaronese > Stef Schrader
09/08/2016 at 13:34

I definitely oughta make my way down there (with Timbits). Besides visiting y’all, I can hit up all the places they filmed – squee! – Tarantino’s Death Proof .