Nissan engineers in Arizona needed a truck to use at their tech center so they built one... out of a Leaf.
Auto shops all over the country typically need a reliable “shop truck” to pick up parts and run other errands, and the engineers at Nissan’s technical center in Arizona are no different. Many of these trucks are original creations and Nissan’s truck is no different.
Well, it’s a little different: it’s a Leaf… sort of.
The 30-plus member durability and reliability team created Sparky: it’s part Frontier, part Titan and mostly Leaf.
“I needed a project for a team building activity so we can bring the team together. We had a need for a truck. Something to drive around, a shop truck,” said Roland Schellenberg, who heads up the team.
Sparky is a one-of-a-kind creation brought to life to help the team cart around tires, parts and other items at Nissan’s proving grounds located on 3,050 acres in Stanfield, Arizona.
Mostly Leaf with a bit of Frontier and Titan welded in, engineers at Nissan's Technical Center in Arizona created their own shop truck.
The low-desert terrain at Nissan’s technical center provides an ideal environment to test vehicles for hot weather, heat durability, engine cooling and air conditioner performance. There is also a 5.7-mile high-speed oval and four individual road courses designed to test vehicle durability, reliability and ride comfort.
“We tried to keep it a secret and be exciting for everybody. But we have visitors and they come and they see that truck and they go straight to ‘what is it?’ and they start looking at it, and it makes great conversation,” Schellenberg said.
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The team took a Leaf and kept the stock interior for the cab, and then cut the roof off from just after the B-pillar and then rigged a Frontier truck bed in the back. In order to make it fit, they cut the top four inches off the bed in order so it sat below the top of the rear doors, which were welded shut to create the outer wall of the bed. The project took several months to complete.
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“After he (Schellenberg) told us it was going to be the LEAF that we would redo, I went home and stayed up till like four in the morning making all kinds of designs for what would work. We basically got the stock LEAF, and after reviewing a bunch of designs of pickup trucks that we have here at Nissan, we decided to go with a Frontier bed,” said Arnold Moulinet, a member of the team.
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However, after installing the Frontier bed, the team still had to close in Sparky’s “cab.” They headed over to the “boneyard” where the company crushes vehicles and salvaged the back of a Titan cab and retrofitted it on the newly minted truck.
“It actually has a power window that works,” Moulinet noted.