cars blog: January 2011

The Fuga is a full-size luxury car from Nissan of Japan, introduced in October 2004. First shown as the Fuga Concept at the 2003 Tokyo Motor Show, it is a replacement for the long running Nissan Cedric and Nissan Gloria series of cars. With the cessation of production of Nissan Cima and Nissan President in 2010, Fuga becomes the top model offered by Nissan. The name of the vehicle was inspired by the fugue, a composition musical form. The name Fuga was chosen to suggest that the long, storied histories of the Cedric, Gloria, Cima, and President are being combined into a new vehicle that continues to provide the prestige and heritage of those vehicles. The last model code for the Cedric and Gloria was Y34, and the last model code for the Cima was F50, with the President as PGF50. Two versions of the smaller Y34 (Cedric & Gloria) and the larger F50 (Cima & President) platforms were offered due to Nissan's dual sales channels in Japan, where Blue Stage sold traditional Nissan products and Red Stage sold former Prince products like the Nissan Skyline, the Gloria, the Nissan Laurel and the Nissan Auster.
The Fuga is a rear wheel drive sedan, with optional All Wheel Drive, riding on a streched wheelbase and width version of the Nissan FM platform, established and introduced with the V35 series Nissan Skyline.
August 2010, the Fuga became Nissan's flagship, top-of-the-range vehicle.

Aluminum is used in the body, hood, trunk lid and is also used in the doors internally to reduce weight. The front suspension uses a double wishbone setup, also to reduce unsprung weight, and to improve vehicle handling. This type of suspension was previously used on the Cedric/Gloria until 1983, when that platform began to use MacPherson struts for the front suspension, but still uses the multilink rear suspension which was introduced on the Cedric/Gloria in 1979. The Fuga uses aluminum alloy extensively in both the front and rear suspension components.
The GT sports package includes Nissan's 4WS version of HICAS to improve stability and handling, taking advantage of the 53:47 weight distribution.
A driver aid system used in Japan, called Distance Control Assistance, pushes the gas pedal against the foot when the DVD navigation with GPS determines that an unsafe speed is being maintained. If the cruise control is being used, the Distance Control Assistance will reduce speed automatically, and will warn the driver that an adjustment is being made with an audible bell sound.
When the Fuga was first introduced for sale October 14, 2004 the advertising campaign used a musical work in the fugue style. The work is titled "Vortex", composed and arranged by Akihiko Matsumoto, and was specially commissioned for Nissan. The music was played in three movements by a full orchestra for 7 minutes and 42 seconds, and a recording was given to dealers in Japan as a promotional DVD-CD gift for customers called "Fuga The Movie and Premium Soundtrack", free of charge.
The DVD and CD package was not available for private sale, with the DVD providing a gallery of images, and descriptions of key technologies such as how the adaptive cruise control functions, various safety technologies like the Blind Spot camera, which is a camera installed on the passenger side side view mirror displaying a view of the curb on the in-dash monitor, and a movie with the Fuga on a mountain road, using the "Vortex" soundtrack. The DVD is recorded in Dolby 5.1 surround sound.