Nissan built its reputation by making reliable, affordable cars and churning them out by the millions. Its legendary Skyline GT-R and Z lines helped revolutionize their respective segments and continue to be extremely popular with enthusiasts today, but Nissan as a whole was never much of a risk-taking brand. Rather, it was most concerned with making safe, sensible cars, and making them well.
Despite that tendency to stick with what works, the brand has occasionally surprised everyone by making something that's completely out of character. Whether it's a shrunken 4x4 or an Italian-styled luxury car with a price on par with Italian exotics of its era, Nissan's back catalog of weird and wonderful models shouldn't be ignored. Rather, it should be celebrated, as many of its strangest models boast the most dedicated fanbases today.
These twelve are among the brand's most unusual cars to date, with some being revered cult classics and others being largely forgotten oddities that can be picked up for peanuts. While it's certainly one of the stranger cars to emerge from Nissan's production line, SlashGear has previously argued that the Nissan Rasheen was ahead of its time . It was first launched in Japan for the 1994 model year and was a precursor to the off-road inspired crossovers that are commonplace today.
Like most of those crossovers, the actual all-terrain capabilities of the Rasheen were limited, although it did at least feature four-wheel-drive. The base model featured a mod.