Is it a classic? Nissan Prairie

80s cars Nissan

The Nissan Prairie doesn’t get the recognition it deserves. Talk of pioneering people carriers inevitably focuses on the Chrysler minivans in the US and the Renault Espace in Europe, but the little house called the Prairie beat the pair of them to market. More than four decades later, it’s time the Prairie was elevated to a higher plane.

With a design influenced by Giorgetto Giugiaro’s Lancia Megagamma concept, the Prairie arrived here in 1983, a couple of years after its debut in Japan. For extended families fed a diet of seven-seat estate cars and minibuses, it was difficult to know what to make of the Prairie, which arrived around the same time as the Toyota Space Cruiser. The pair appeared in an Autocar twin test, which labelled them ‘a new breed of estate cars that are high, short and amazingly spacious’. For parents who hadn’t mastered the art of family planning, the Toyota had the HiAce card of a third row of seats and a name that sounded like something you’d use to take Princess Leia to the roller disco. But while the Space Cruiser had a single sliding door, the Prairie had two, along with an incredibly low loading lip, a low floor and a pillarless side entrance. It took up no more room on the road than a Triumph Acclaim, yet was eight inches higher than a traditional family car, with a load area only 17 inches from the ground. Nissan waxed lyrical about it offering ‘the kind of space a family needs for masses of holiday luggage, the space a DIY man needs for sheets of chipboard or bulky objects; space an antique dealer needs for furniture or a young mother for prams and shopping’. The brochure went further, pointing to the ability to fold down the front and rear seat backs to create ‘a comfortable sleeping area for two’. Mind you, it also said it provided ‘as good a bed as in many expensive mobile homes’, which is probably a stretch. A cheap motel, maybe, but that’s a different kettle of sushi.

The space race had begun. Within a couple of years of its arrival, the Prairie faced a growing legion of rivals, most notably the Renault Espace and the Mitsubishi Space Wagon. In a group test featuring these newcomers and the Space Cruiser, the Nissan was dismissed for having too few seats (a third row was available in Japan) but lauded for its estate-car practicality. Which is probably why it fails to register little more than a footnote in the Big Book of People Carriers. The world was only just coming to terms with the concept of the MPV, so the compact MPV stood little chance of establishing a niche. We’d have to wait until 1996 for the arrival of the Renault Mégane Scénic, widely acknowledged as the world’s first compact MPV, albeit 15 years later than the Nissan.

By then, the Prairie had unexpectedly cornered a different part of the market. In 1985, engineer Rod Brotherwood took on a project for his paraplegic neighbour John Lambert, who asked if he could convert a vehicle to take his wheelchair. At the time, John, a former pilot, was using a Bedford van with a tail-lift, which was far from ideal. Rising to the challenge, Rod pinpointed the Prairie as a great foundation for a wheelchair accessible conversion. John purchased a brand-new Prairie, before Rod fitted an integral ramp at the back, new restraint systems, a raised roof, lower floor, a new fuel tank and new exhaust system. According to John, the converted Prairie ‘was perfect right from the start’, and the first WAV (Wheelchair Accessible Vehicle) was born. Brotherwood has gone on to become a UK leader in the sector, but the foundations were built on the practicality and wide-open space of the Prairie.

Nissan’s pillarless wonder didn’t mobilise an entire nation, but it did spark a revolution in the field of WAVs, and for that, it deserves great credit. It also looks like a lofty Fiat Uno, which should come as no surprise given the Giugiaro connection. The Prairie is a classic – and Uno it. 

This article first appeared in issue 17 of Classic.Retro.Modern. magazine.