Nissan Once Designed A Concept Car Around The Needs Of An Underwater Photographer

Today’s Cold Start is wildly late because I was up until about 2 am with David wrenching on our 375,000-mile NYC taxi. We’ve been at it nonstop for days and days. We’ll have a lot more to say about that filthy little workhorse, but at the moment, I’m just exhausted. My hands feel raw and all those years of New York road grime are so embedded in my skin I think Con Edison wants to dig around in them. David is even worse off. But all this time spent elbow-deep in a Nissan NV200 made me wonder a bit about this little van’s backstory.

I really grew to respect the NV200, especially in its taxi configuration. It’s just a well-designed little machine! It’s a solid two feet shorter than the old Ford Crown Vic taxis it was intended to replace, and feels like it has a lot more room inside. The sliding doors make much more sense for a taxi in a dense city, and the floor is completely flat. Sure, the harsh environment and hard work of being a cab absolutely took their toll on this yellow oblong, but it’s obvious this little brute served its tour of duty well.

As I said, we’ll have a lot more detail about what we did to the taxi and what we’re going to do with it, but for the moment I’m just happy not to be underneath the damn thing, or with my hand shoved painfully in some crevasse deep in its entrails, wondering why some bolt keeps spinning.

So I’ve been thinking more than I ever have about Nissan NV200s, and noticing them all over the place, invisibly doing all sorts of work in the background, sort of like 3/4-scale Econolines. So where did this humble little workhorse come from? Well, weirdly, the first public incarnation was a concept car designed specifically to meet the needs of an underwater photographer.

I’m not kidding; back in 2008 Nissan thought the best market to target as the focus of their new concept car would be the lucrative and vast market of marine biologists/underwater photographers with lots of money to spend on incredibly advanced and specialized custom vans.

Here’s what Nissan’s design team had to say about the project:

But imagine the case a marine biologist/photographer. When setting off on an expedition, he or she might take along a mountain of equipment – including underwater cameras and lights, scuba diving equipment, an underwater scooter, computer equipment for downloading digital images, mobile communication equipment to send the images to clients or research centers, clothing, food and water, and perhaps camping or overnight gear. This is typically enough equipment to fill a van, with little space left over for an on-site office. That’s where innovation comes in.

I won’t lie, I kind of love this hyper-specificity, especially for something as arcane as an underwater photographer. And, sure, the good solutions developed for this very likely could be adapted for something a little more common, like an underwater contractor or underwater caterer.

The NV200 concept van had this odd slide-out rack thing where your average on-the-go underwater photographer could stash all their essential gear, like oxygen canisters and that little ovoid propulsion thing and flippers and cameras and sexy fish outfits or whatever else an underwater photographer uses. I’m not sure this is the most practical way to do this – you need basically a whole other open parking spot behind you to extend this thing – but it sure looks cool.

There’s interior pictures, too, showing a little workstation area for Photoshopping out shark pimples, I imagine. I guess this would only be accessible when the rear slide-out thing is deployed? Nice floors, too.

While most of this is concept car frippery and daydreams, the van itself does look remarkably close to what the NV200 ended up being. That side window design is an especially notable element that made it to the production version:

That’s maybe not the most flattering picture, but it’s ours, dammit. It’s maybe not the most incredible looking van ever built, but the more you look at it, I think the more you’ll end up appreciating it.

The proportions are pretty similar to the production NV200, too, but details like the door handles and yellow-tinted glass and those overlapping-tristar wheels remain show car-only.

The NV200 is one of those workhorse vehicles that tends to just blend into the background of life. But it actually had an interesting, even daring origin, and I think you should keep your eyes out and the next time you see one, usually white, usually working for a plumber or part of a university’s fleet, you should take a moment and appreciate this hardworking little box on wheels.